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33 U.N.S.W.L.J. 474 (2010)
Operation Titstorm: Hacktivism or Cyberterrorism?

handle is hein.journals/swales33 and id is 478 raw text is: UNSW Law Journal

OPERATION TITSTORM: HACKTIVISM OR CYBER-
TERRORISM?
KEIRAN HARDY*
Re: Operation Titstorm                                            post #17
Hey the cult is already trying to label us as terrorists and as you put it once you
mess with the gover[n]ment things start getting messy. If we don't do damage
control then they really will be capable of truthfully calling us terrorists for
attacking a government.
I INTRODUCTION
On 10 February 2010, an internet based group of protesters calling
themselves 'Anonymous' launched a cyber-attack on the Australian Parliament
House website. Aptly named 'Operation Titstorm', the attack was launched by
the group to protest against the Rudd government's plans to introduce a
mandatory internet filter banning pornographic images of animated characters,
small breasted women and female ejaculation. It brought down the website for
three days by flooding it with network traffic - up to 7.5 million requests per
second - and it bombarded parliamentary email addresses with pornographic
material (ironically, of the very kind the government intends to ban). It also
*   LLB Candidate, University of New South Wales; Research Assistant, Australian Research Council
Laureate Fellowship on Anti-Terrorism Law, Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, University of New
South Wales. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of
this paper. Any remaining errors are my own.
I   urbanhawk, 'Re: Operation Titstorm' on Anonymous Activism Forum, Why We Protest (6 May 2010)
<http://forums.whyweprotest.net/292-freedom-expression/operation-titstorm-61002/>.

474

Volume 33(2)

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