Despite its best attempts, the hacker collective “Anonymous” was not able to bring the complete Vatican website down.
As reported in Friday’s edition of CathNews, the Vatican’s website was off line on Wednesday 7 March, allegedly under attack from Anonymous.
However, despite launching an attack for several hours, Anonymous was unsuccessful in completely shutting the site down.
The hackers “were not able to achieve their objective” of completely bringing down the site, Vice director of the press office, Father Ciro Benedettini said.
He said Anonymous usually posts its signature banner on a website once it has completely taken it over, and its banner never appeared on the Holy See’s online hub.
Anonymous said the attack was “in response to the doctrines, liturgies and the precepts, absurd and anachronistic that your organization is for profit (Roman Apostolic Church) propagates and spreads worldwide and while not targeting christians or christianity, it was targeting the “corrupt roman Apostolic Church”.”
Anonymous also objected to the Catholic stance on abortion, and stated the non-use of contraceptives and clergy sexual abuse as motives for the attack.
In admitting a partial attack, Benedettini said the problem was solved in the evening after the attempted full attack.
Sources
- CNA
- Image: Jean Marc Morandini