Thai people protest against the government’s decision to hinder Internet access and increase censorship measures
By Catalin Cimpanu 2 Oct 2015, 21:33 GMT
A powerful DDoS attack has brought down the websites of the Thai government (thaigov.go.th) and of the country’s Ministry of Information, Communications and Technology (ICT) (mict.go.th).
What differentiates this DDoS attack from any other DDoS attack is that it wasn’t the work of a botnet but a result of users continuously refreshing the aforementioned Web pages, until their servers gave out.
The whole movement started as messages shared on social media among Thai citizens, as a modern way to protest against the country’s current military regime, which plans to restrict Internet access by forcing all outgoing Internet connections to go through one single gateway.
Like most countries at one point in their history, Thailand used to have one single gateway which connected its population to the Internet, but local infrastructure kept developing and the country now has 10 such exit points, as the BBC reports.
DDoS attack is a protest against plans for “The Great Firewall of Thailand”
While the government says that its plans for a single gateway are driven by an attempt to cut down costs, most Thais are fearing this might be the first step toward creating “The Great Firewall of Thailand,” an Internet sniffing and filtering system, similar to the “The Great Firewall of China.”
Tens of thousands of Thais have already signed an online petition opposing to the creation of one single Internet gateway, and the DDoS’ success seems to have attracted the officials’ attention.
After the impromptu DDoS attack, Minister for Information Uttama Savanayana showed the first signs of doubt when he said that the single gateway decision was kept secret because it was not final, and it did not want to alarm the population. Now the question is, if he knew a decision would cause alarm among the population, why even ponder it in the first place?
The DDoS attack was launched on Wednesday, October 1, and the sites were brought back online the next morning. Both sites are fully operational right now.