Anonymous Hackers Intensify Activity in Romania

In the latest move in recent days, the computer hacking group Anonymous hit the website of the International Monetary Fund, IMF, for Romania late last week and also defaced the website of the Association of Retired Military Personnel.

The apparent reason for the action was to express dissatisfaction with the current relations between Romania and the IMF. The computer hackers announced they would publish all the data from the IMF website and some of the information found on Bucharest's official website they deem as "very interesting" once they finished copying the information on their servers.

Romania is dependent on a 20 billion euro rescue package from the IMF, the European Union and the World Bank. It obtained the loan in May 2009 in exchange for agreeing to push through austerity measures aimed at taming the country’s yawning deficit.

In July 2010 the government cut civil servants' wages by 25 per cent, while thousands of state jobs were axed and VAT was increased by 5 per cent to 24 per cent.

The Anti-Organised Crime and Terrorism Division on Saturday announced it has launched an investigation in order to identify the persons that brought down the IMF Romania’s website.

Since mid-January, the elusive group targeted Romania’s institutions, bringing down several websites of the central administration in protest to the violent response of the police forces to the anti-austerity measures in Bucharest.

Anonymous multiplied their actions against Romania’s institutions after the signing of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, ACTA. ACTA is a multilateral agreement which aims to establish international standards for intellectual property rights enforcement.

But Bucharest announced on Friday it will wait for a European Court of Justice ruling on the controversial ACTA treaty before ratifying it. The EU Commission on Wednesday asked the judges in Luxembourg to decide on the legality of the treaty.