The Information Commissioner’s Office website has suffered a major hack attack – unleashed by a group claimed to be linked to the Anonymous collective – amid claims the regulator does not do enough to protect consumer data.
The site, www.ico.gov.uk, which was down for nearly three days, was one of two targets; the other being the Leveson Inquiry site, although the latter remained online.
A Tumblr page belonging to “Anon ATeam” expressed its dissatisfaction at the way the ICO conducts itself, and the level of protection provided to private data in the UK.
“80 per cent of data protection breaches crime in the UK are committed by the UK civil service and yet not properly investigated,” claimed the site. “[The] Information Commissioner lacks independence [and] has repeatedly failed to protect the public’s privacy from hacking or data protection breaches,” it added.
Meanwhile, it claimed: “The Leveson inquiry has become a farce, with the Lord Justice Leveson reporting to a member of cabinet Jeremy Hunt who has already been identified as having engaged in malfeasance in office via fraudulent release of data to Newscorp.”
A Twitter account calling itself ‘UKAnonymous2012’ informed the wider world of the attacks late last night and this morning, repeatedly tweeting: #TANGODOWN @ http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk & http://ico.gov.uk
The ICO now has powers to fine data protection miscreants up to £500,000. However, in March, a Freedom of Information request revealed that the ICO had slashed fines for businesses which had breached data laws in half of the cases in which it has slapped a monetary penalty.
