Wednesday, June 15, 2016

After downing SABC's websites, Anonymous Africa downs Gupta-owned websites of ANN7 TV news channel, The New Age newspaper, Sahara Computers.


After its cyber attack on the SABC's websites on Sunday afternoon, the hacktivist group Anonymous Africa set it sights on the Gupta-owned ANN7, The New Age newspaper and Sahara Computers with all of the sites that went down and became unavailable on Wednesday afternoon for a period of time.

Shares of Oakbay Resources that owns ANN7, The New Age, Sahara and other subsidiaries, plummeted on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), falling a massive 91%.

Anonymous Africa says its taking the actions over what it calls "censorship and Apartheid style tactics to withhold and censor the the people of South Africa".

Oakbay in a statement told TV with Thinus that "Oakbay is aware of attempts to hack into its websites and has taken preventative measures, in collaboration with its IT consultants."

"Whilst some of the company's websites are running slower than normal, the matter is under control".

The SABC and its controversial boss Hlaudi Motsoeneng has come under heavy and near universal criticism the past few weeks over highly controversial and shocking decisions at the public broadcaster that critics, academics, media experts, political parties, and civil society groups have all slammed as censorship.

A public petition that has already amassed thousands of votes and keeps growing has been started, asking the broadcasting regulator, Icasa, to invervene and to "stop SABC censorship".

As chief operating officer (COO) Hlaudi Motsoeneng announced that the SABC's SABC TV News will now censor visuals from public protests to no longer show property destruction and The Editors show on SAfm was abruptly cancelled last Sunday.


On Wednesday Anonymous Africa said it will follow up the SABC attack with one aimed at ANN7, the TV news channel on MultiChoice's DStv satellite pay-TV platform, The New Age newspaper and Sahara Computers, all of which saw their websites go down and become unavailable for a while.

UPDATE Wednesday 15 June 2016 21:30 - on Wednesday night Anonymous Africa took down ANN7's website for a second time on Wednesday and made it unavailable again.