Cyberattack Hits TMT and State Government Websites

Civil Beat: READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE Hawaii state government’s official website went down Sunday, along with the main site for the organization building the Thirty Meter Telescope atop Mauna Kea.

Update: TMT spokeswoman Caroline Witherspoon confirmed that the organization’s website had received a denial of service attack but said that it was back up as of 3 p.m. She didn’t know how long the attack lasted.

The state’s website was still down as of 4 p.m.

Operation Green Rights, a self-described faction of the hacker group Anonymous, took responsibility Sunday for the attack in a blog post titled “Anonymous with the Hawaiian natives against #TMT.”

The TMT website went down Sunday after a denial of service attack.

Anonymous "Green Rights" Twitter Post, 4/26/15 https://twitter.com/OpGreenRights/status/592439016584302592

“Nothing will ever justify the destruction of ecosystems; filthy money can never replace them,” the article said.

The governor’s office did not immediately reply to a request for comment Sunday.

Hawaii government officials and TMT have been under fire for moving forward with plans to build a huge telescope atop Mauna Kea, a sacred site to many Native Hawaiians.

Protests over the project, which went through seven years of approvals before breaking ground, have mounted over the past two months, resulting in Gov. David Ige announcing TMT’s decision to delay construction.