DUBAI: The Internet “hacktivists” Anonymous reported to have hit the United Arab Emirates government computer system in a move the group said was to highlight the ongoing censorship and crackdown of online activities in the Gulf country. The group claimed to have accessed the servers in charge of filtering Internet traffic before it reaches the population within the UAE's borders and posted the information Saturday. The action seems to have been initiated on what the group referred to as “Operation GodFather" as part of an effort to expose official internet censorship and oppression in the UAE. “Hello citizens of the world. Here comes another leak. This time our target was UAE and its oppressive Netfilers," they stated. “As many of you might already know UAE's internet is fully run and monitored by government run ISP's. We decided to ‘take a look' ;) we managed to get into the Netfilter server and are leaking this data we extracted from their DB." According to reports, the leak appears to contain a list of blockades set in place with the use of “wildcards" and, according to the hacktivists, a list of website URLs filtered by the UAE's Internet service providers was revealed. Including websites that host adult content, the list includes VPN providers and any other site that could help users bypass censorship mechanisms, social media networks and dating sites, and sites that promote religious views different than Islam.
