It has been reported by the Computer World that hackers working under the name of the Anonymous hacktivist collective hit a U.S. government website on Saturday, replacing its home page with a 1,340 word text detailing its frustrations with the way the American legal system works and a threat to release "secrets" gathered from U.S. government websites.
"This mornings cyber attack on the Commissions website www.ussc.gov brought it down temporarily, but the site now has been restored," the commission said in a brief statement issued on Saturday evening.A "The Commissions publications, training materials, and federal sentencing statistics are again readily accessible to visitors to the site."
The website of the U.S. Sentencing Commission deals with establishing sentencing policies for the federal court system.
"Two weeks ago today, a line was crossed," the message read. "Two weeks ago today, Aaron Swartz was killed. Killed because he faced an impossible choice. Killed because he was forced into playing a game he could not win -- a twisted and distorted perversion of justice -- a game where the only winning move was not to play."
It may be recalled that Swartz committed suicide in New York on Jan. 11, apparently over an upcoming trial on computer intrusion, wire fraud and data theft charges that carried a maximum penalty of 35 years in jail. The charges stem from allegations that Swartz stole millions of scholarly articles and documents from the JSTOR database with the intention of making them available online at no charge.
The message went on to say that the group had infiltrated numerous U.S. government websites and gathered material it judged would be embarrassing if released.
"We have enough fissile material for multiple warheads. Today we are launching the first of these. Operation Last Resort has begun..."
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