Thailand’s Government Is Under Attack
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Governments all around the world have had to put up with the dark side of the ever-growing extensive use of social media. Although the internet has become a crucial part of our lives and the use of social media often allows us to talk with someone across the globe, some countries see it as a massive threat on the national security and social structure.
The reason for this is of course the ability offered by social media to unite off the radar and work against the government or any other body. That is exactly what a group of activists did last week when it declared a full-fledged cyber attack against the Thai government due to its refusal to meet their demands and officially cancel the single gateway proposal.
The plan caused a lot of controversy in the country due to concerns that the government is interested in controlling website and blocking the freedom the internet offers. In preparation for subsequent attacks, a group calling itself “Thailand F5 Cyber Army” is recruiting netizens through online courses aimed at temporarily shutting down government websites — this time for more than just a few hours.
The Information and Communication Technology Ministry last week announced it would abandon the single gateway plan. But the activists said they would continue their campaign until the proposal was formally canceled. by a cabinet order. The government has refused to comment on the planned “cyber war”.Since the start of the courses last Sunday night, almost 1,000 people have expressed interest in joining the training. However, due to limited spots, the group was able to provide passwords to just over 300 people to join the chat rooms.
Three times a week volunteers teach participants how to hide their IP addresses using a Firefox web browser and how to install and use an application that automatically refreshes the targeted websites every second. Using it, activists simultaneously attacked government websites over and over, refreshing the browser to overload the servers and shutting them down, a tactic known as a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS), to overload servers and make the web pages slow or temporarily unavailable.
“What we’ve done so far is only symbolic. We want the government to realize the extent to which people are against the proposal,” said a team representative who asked not to be named. “As for serious attacks on the government’s IT system — we haven’t even started them.”
