After the junta’s rubber-stamp National Legislative Assembly (NLA) approved the amendment to the controversial Computer Crimes Act [1] on 16 December, various government websites have been shut down by cyber-attacks.

 

Various actors have claimed responsibility for the attacks including the Thailand Internet Firewall [2]’s Facebook page and the Anonymous [3], a loose worldwide network of hackers. The attacks came in the form of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), where an online service is made unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources.

 

The attacked websites include those belonging to the Police Region 1 Training Centre [4], the Thai Government [5], the Royal Gazette [6], the Ministry of Defense [7] and the Royal Thai Navy [8]. Most of the websites are now back online though some remain unavailable. 

 

On 16 December, the Anonymous posted a budget document of the National Intelligence Agency and claimed that they had hacked the NIA to get it.

 

Concerns have been raised among Thai netizens that personal data might be published as part of the attacks. Thai Netizen Network (TNN) therefore tweeted a message [9] urging the Anonymous to avoid attacking personal data.

 

“Thanks for support, #Anonymous. You made your point. Further hack may harm Thai citizens more than Junta. Please consider avoiding citizen data? Thanks,” reads the TNN twitter.