The Ministry of Gender and Labor website has been taken down after hackers under the H4cK3rsGh0sT25 Anonymous group managed to launch a cyberattack on the government website making it inaccessible to visitors. The government website is down after hackers strike again. Government websites suffered a number of cyber attacks launched by the international hacking collective Anonymous during the post-election period after hackers cited continuous violation of citizens’ human rights in Uganda by the government.
Also read: WhatsApp warns users about the latest hack
This prompted them to take action against some government websites belonging to ministries and the parliament as well as government agencies like URA (Uganda Revenue Authority). During these attacks, information belonging to the government was availed to the public allowing people to simply download the files of their choice.
A government website is down after hackers strike back as Minister dares them
The Minister of Gender, Labor and Social Development Frank Tumwebaze dared the hackers in a tweet as he praised the government’s ICT resilience and cyber defence capabilities to withstand this kind of attack on government websites.
However, moments later after his response, people reported that the website mglsd.go.ug belonging to the Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development was down. The popular Anonymous hackers promised to continue launching these attacks on the government for continued abuses of human rights and suppressing people’s freedom of speech.
A response from the foreign hackers reveals that the site was taken down a second time after Minister Frank Tumwebaze confirmed that it is still up and running despite threats made.
Currently, the government website is down after hackers strike, any attempts to visit it will display an error. It remains uncertain which government website will be taken down next but it seems that the international hackers are determined to make good on their promises.
Previous cyber attacks on government by Anonymous
Post-election attacks on government websites
In the wee hours of Saturday morning, the hackers through their Twitter handle Anonymousx64 announced that they had taken down websites that belonged to the government of Uganda. This was done in protest of the internet shutdown that the government had imposed. Government files with information concerning budgets, acts of parliament, bills, COVID-19, members of parliament and much more were all available for the public to access in the links on the international hackers’ page.
Read also: Uganda government websites hacked by International hackers Anonymous over the weekend
Uganda Police website hacked during November 2020 protests
According to info security magazine, hacktivists reportedly downed the website of Uganda Police in the wake of protests triggered by the arrest of Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, also known by his pop star also known as, Bobi Wine. Visitors to https://www.upf.go.ug/ were redirected to a different address where the following message was displayed: “This site can’t be reached. www.upf.go.ug took too long to respond.” “Anonymous owned up to the incident revealing that they were responding to recent events in Uganda that saw lives lost as police tried to disperse protestors who were against the arrest of NUP presidential candidate, Robert Kyagulanyi alias Bobi Wine.”
Read more: Anonymous responds to Bobi Wine in recent communication that shocks the internet.
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