Brazil Hacker Group Continues Wave of Attacks, Hits Central Bank

(Dow Jones) - A Brazilian computer hacker group Friday continued a wave of attacks begun earlier this week, hampering the websites of prominent financial institutions, including the Brazilian central bank.

The group, which dubbed itself Anonymous Brasil, reportedly took aim at a series of websites, launching "denial of service" attacks against the pages of the Brazilian banking federation, called Febraban, as well as Banco BMG, Banco Panamericano and the pages of Citigroup Inc. both in Brazil and in the US.

The websites of all those named were operating intermittently on Friday morning. Citi Brazil's head of public affairs Priscilla Cortezze said the bank had no comment. A spokesman for Febraban said that there was an unusually high number of accesses to the group's website.

Banco BMG and Banco Panamericano couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

The group claimed on its Twitter account to have briefly targeted the central bank's website early Friday, though the institution didn't confirm the website problems were caused by hackers. "During the morning there was an overload of accesses to the central bank's website, bringing instability and delays," the central bank said. "No bank systems or transactions were affected."

The group, which claims to be promoting its campaign against corruption, earlier in the week claimed responsibility for crippling the websites of Brazil's largest state-run and private-sector banks, including Banco do Brasil SA, Itau Unibanco Holding, Banco Bradesco and HSBC Holdings PLC.

Anonymous Brasil, which is a collaborative effort between hacker subgroups identified as Anti-Security Brazilian Team and iPiratesGroup, has said that its efforts are aimed at activism to bring more social and economic equality to Brazil, and that it isn't interested in theft.

The group, which announced its attacks via Twitter, has published an action list for further attacks this year, which will include airlines, telephone companies, credit-card companies and government websites. The groups said they also plan to hijack transmissions by radio stations.

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