Update: Egyptian Gov't Web Sites Under Attack

Web sites run by the Egyptian government are experiencing service problems, possibly as a result of denial of service attacks mounted by the collective known as Anonymous, known for staging web attacks on PayPal and MasterCard in support of Wikileaks.

Anonymous called for volunteers to stage a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against web sites run by the Egyptian government, notably the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and the Ministry of the Interior. The sites that not working as of 11 a.m. Eastern Time are the Egyptian cabinet and the Communications Ministry, while the Interior Ministry seems to still be working.

The group's Facebook page, called Operation Egypt carries messages about the Egyptian protests, and also a picture of a recruiting poster with an IRC channel as well as a care package to download. The rest of the page has news and updates from Egyptian and foreign sources.

Clicking on the info page leads to a site that says it is AnonOps, a group that was formed from within the collective that launched the attacks on PayPal. However, they say they did not attack any web sites.

Meanwhile the group has asked, via the IRC chat rooms, that users access a web-based version of a program called Low Orbit Ion Cannon or download it, according to reports from netcraft.com, which publishes news on online security. The software stages DDoS attacks and was originally written as a stress-testing application.

The Internet has been an arena for conflict during the protests, as Twitter reported that it has been blocked in that country.