Anonymous may take down F1 and FIA.com websites in protest of "evil regime"

Just when we thought that it was a going to be a peaceful weekend kicking back and relaxing in high anticipation of the upcoming Bahrain Grand Prix, hacker group Anonymous has decided to rain on our parade.  The now infamous hacker team, apparently brought down both the official F1 website and the FIA.com site with a DoS (Denial of Service) attack on Friday and has threatened to do the same during the course of today's race.

'Operation Bahrain’ (irc.voxanon.net #OpBahrain) is the latest hack in the group's signature method of standing up against oppression.  The reason for the attack was to stand by the kingdom of Bahrain against “atrocities committed by the regime of this “king” (King Hamad bin al-Khalifa)". In their official press release, they highlighted the kinds of feedback they have observed from the people of Bahrain through Twitter feeds, etc. and decided to do something about it. They called it - a popular and peaceful revolt against the medieval concept of absolute monarchy.

Racing to stop atrocities

The group also took shots at Bernie Ecclestone, president and CEO of Formula One management and Formula One administration, saying that by having the race in the Kingdom of Bahrain, he was in support of the oppression or was simply lied to and was ignorant of the atrocities committed in the region.

Although the sites were up and running in a few hours, the adamant hacker group vowed to bring it down again and stated they would turn the site - www.formula1.com, into “a smoking crater in cyber space.” They even threatened to jam phone lines, bomb e-mail inboxes and wreck anything that they could find on the internet. Finally in a closing paragraph, the team also requested the participating drivers in the Formula 1 Grand Prix to join them in protest of the “evil regime” and closed with their signature statement - We Are Anonymous – We Are Everywhere – We Are Legion – We Never Forget – We Never Forgive – EXPECT US SIGNED — Anonymous.

As usual, the collective has made quite a statement while proving that no one is beyond their grasp. The vigilante hacker group has made examples of yet another global “figure” in order to warn the world that oppression will be fought on a whole new arena – cyberspace. In the meantime, whether or not the race will go on as per today's schedule (5.30pm IST) is unknown, but stay tuned as the drama unfolds.