Thai government websites paralysed by DDoS attack

Several Thai government websites have been paralysed by a suspected distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. Websites belonging to the offices of the prime minister, defence minister, and communications minister have suffered outage.

The sites were rendered inactive at about 10pm local time on Wednesday, 30 September but were restored by the next day. The cyber-attack is thought to have been launched by internet protesters who have been campaigning against the government's plans to limit the flow of information.

Protesters have been demanding that the government drop plans on implementing Single Gateway, which according to the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) ministry, would "control inappropriate websites and information flows from other countries via the internet".

Tens of thousands have signed a petition urging the government to abandon its plans, which they have dubbed the "Great Firewall of Thailand" in reference to the "Great Firewall of China", after the proposal emerged earlier. If the government has its way, it would funnel the entire internet traffic flowing in the country through a central line making it easier for the administration to monitor information.

The reported DDoS attack was carried out after the Anti-CAT Tower Mob group, which has more than 127,000 members on Facebook, called for an outage. The group went ahead with its actions despite a strong warning from the government.