Photo: Nissan
Although the automaker doesn’t have anything to do with whale hunting, a couple of Nissan’s websites were down for two days after an Anonymous-linked hacker protesting Japanese whaling attempted to highjack them.
Nissan’s global corporate sites and Japanese domestic market site were taken down after the company’s Internet administrators detected an attempted denial-of-service attack. In other words, the sites were bombarded with visits in an effort to block other users.
The Japanese carmaker resorted to this measure to prevent possible leaks of customer or corporate data.
As Nissan’s spokesman David Reuter stated, “Customer privacy and security is of utmost importance, and we take any potential threat to our information systems seriously.”
The attack didn’t appear to be officially conducted by the well-known group Anonymous but by someone associated with the international hacktivist group. In the meantime, an anti-whaling campaign spread over Twitter through the #OpWhales and #OpKillingBay hashtags, as Automotive News reports.
Whaling has been practiced in Japan for ages and right after the 1986 whaling ban came into effect, the country launched its scientific whaling program, a cover-up for its ongoing commercial whaling operations, as some voices say.
The Japanese whaling fleet departs twice a year, and in the North Pacific, up to 200 mike whales, 50 Bryde’s, 100 sei whales and ten sperm whales are being killed in the name of science. Whalers killed no less than 935 minke whales and 50 fin whales each year in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary before the International Court of Justice ruled that this is illegal.
Meat from these whales is then sold in food markets or given away for free or at low costs to schools or hospitals, to encourage the consumption of such meat.
Apparently, the Land of the Rising Sun is not the only country where these animals are being hunted, as Norway and Iceland are also known for whaling.
“We do not comment or take a stance on topics which we view as outside the scope of our business,” Nissan's spokesman concluded.
The Japanese carmaker resorted to this measure to prevent possible leaks of customer or corporate data.
As Nissan’s spokesman David Reuter stated, “Customer privacy and security is of utmost importance, and we take any potential threat to our information systems seriously.”
The attack didn’t appear to be officially conducted by the well-known group Anonymous but by someone associated with the international hacktivist group. In the meantime, an anti-whaling campaign spread over Twitter through the #OpWhales and #OpKillingBay hashtags, as Automotive News reports.
Whaling has been practiced in Japan for ages and right after the 1986 whaling ban came into effect, the country launched its scientific whaling program, a cover-up for its ongoing commercial whaling operations, as some voices say.
The Japanese whaling fleet departs twice a year, and in the North Pacific, up to 200 mike whales, 50 Bryde’s, 100 sei whales and ten sperm whales are being killed in the name of science. Whalers killed no less than 935 minke whales and 50 fin whales each year in the Southern Ocean Sanctuary before the International Court of Justice ruled that this is illegal.
Meat from these whales is then sold in food markets or given away for free or at low costs to schools or hospitals, to encourage the consumption of such meat.
Apparently, the Land of the Rising Sun is not the only country where these animals are being hunted, as Norway and Iceland are also known for whaling.
“We do not comment or take a stance on topics which we view as outside the scope of our business,” Nissan's spokesman concluded.
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