Anonymous hackers deface Victoria's Human Rights Commission website, claim AnonPlus is 'non-criminal'

Hackers claiming to be a part of the notorious international hacktivist group Anonymous have defaced Victoria's Human Rights Commission website with a lengthy message about its social network AnonPlus.

The Guardian reports that the organisation's website and pages were replaced with a message regarding its social network called AnonPlus, claiming they are "non-criminal" and only the "home page was chanced." It also claimed that no data was affected, stolen or deleted in the breach.

"Every person who has the goodwill to act is welcome," the message reportedly read. "AnonPlus spreads ideas without censorship, creates spaces to spread directly through mass defacement, publish news that the media filtered and managed for the consumption of who controls, we do that to restore dignity to the function of the media: media should be free, without censorship and must limit itself to 'show what's happening' and don't 'say to us what's wrong and what's right."

"AnonPlus puts offline sites that actively contribute to the control of the masses from the corrupt, that by manipulating information and opinions create false realities: this is censorship," the message read, The Guardian reported, noting that the "nonsensical message" posted by the group did not make grammatical sense. "AnonPlus not act for personal or political causes, has no leaders, moves to the interests of the people and we will fight until the leadership and the powership will lead into the hand of people: unique owner of the free world."

The message also reportedly included a link to the group's Twitter account. IBTimes UK has reached out to the group for comment.

The group's message has since been replaced with a note from the commission saying its website is temporarily down and its team is currently working to get it back online "as soon as possible". At the time of publication, the commission's website was still offline.

The organisation also took to Twitter to verify that its site is currently offline and has apologised for the inconvenience.

"The reason behind today's activity is unknown," the commission's media spokeswoman told Guardian Australia. "No demands have been made to the commission. We would like to make clear that no privacy breach has occurred as personal data is not held on this site."

On 1 January, the hacktivist group Anonymous released a New Year video message from a verified YouTube channel featuring a masked and hooded CGI figure with a computerised voice dubbing the 2016 "a year of awakening."

"2016 was a year of awakening, once secret data was leaked, and the citizens of the world began to stand together. 2016 armed the general population with knowledge, knowledge that if used correctly could truly change the world for the better."

"2017 will be a year of planetary revolution," the group continues. "We enter this new year armed with the knowledge of countless of generations that came before us...The mistakes of our ancestors were lessons for their descendents - for us and for all generations to come. The time to restore the balance of power is now...This year is up to the people. You are the key; you always have been."