The hacker group “Anonymous” on Wednesday took control of the Facebook page of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, the Twitter account of ex-President Alvaro Uribe, and caused a shut-down the website for Colombia’s Ministry of Defense.
The hackers’ offensive took place around 2PM on Colombia’s Independence Day.
On Santos’ Facebook page, Anonymous posted a link to a YouTube video proclaiming that Colombia was celebrating a “false independence.” The video listed what the authors thought was wrong with Colombia. At 5PM, Santos’ account was still under control of the hackers, who announced that “surprises” would continue until 6PM.
Santos tweeted that he regretted “the interference on the Facebook account on my name and the messages that have been published from there.”
Uribe’s Twitter account was similarly hacked and featured a link to the same video as well as a new background featuring the Anonymous logo. Uribe tweeted that “my account has been penetrated by terrorists.”
The former president’s choice of words led to hundreds of Twitter comments under #uribepenetrado remarking on how Anonymous “had penetrated his flower.”
The messages posted by Anonymous on the former president’s Twitter page were removed within hours while Uribe called Twitter for help, but the politician failed to replace the background which kept showing the hacker collective’s logo.
Anonymous also appears to have hacked or attacked the Ministry of Defense website. An image of the website with an Anonymous logo has been posted on their twitter account and the website of the ministry was down in the afternoon.
Earlier in the day, the presidential website was also down, although Anonymous did not claim an attack on that website.
The hacker collective had announced an “independence offensive” on Tuesday, the day before Colombia celebrated its 201st birthday.
Earlier this year, Anonymous hacked the Colombian Senate’s website.