Culture

Five People Who Could Be Behind The Census “Hack”

Turns out a lot of folk have beef with Australia.

by Osman Faruqi  10 August 2016

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The federal government is blaming “foreign hackers” for last night’s Census debacle but people are already calling bullshit. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has said they took down the Census website after it fell victim to four distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Security experts have pointed out that there isn’t a lot of evidence to back up those claims.

Still, there’s no good reason to doubt the government’s claims of a targeted, DDoS attack. So who could have been responsible? Well, according to Sam Varghese over at iTWire, “It would have taken an attack of some magnitude to bring operations to a halt.”

Who has the motivation, technical resources and know how required to take down The Great Australian Census? We can think of a few potential culprits.

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1. Kevin Rudd

The fact that the former Prime Minister hasn’t already been sent straight to the slammer is a sign of further incompetence on the part of our government. It was obviously Rudd. He’s still reeling after having been rejected for the UN Secretary General position by Malcolm Turnbull, so he’s got the motivation.

Rudd was also Prime Minister the last time we actually held a successful census, back in 2011, so he knows how it all works. And he’s clearly been the laying the ground work for a bid for political asylum in Tonga, once his plan came to fruition.

It was Rudd.

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2. Sun Yang and the Chinese Olympic swimming team

Okay, okay, I know it’s cool to hate on Sun Yang right now but destroying Census night would actually be a perfect way to exact revenge on Australia. The Chinese Olympic swimming team have been politely asking Australia to apologise on behalf of Mack Horton, who referred to Yang as “drug cheat”, and haven’t gotten a response.

Yesterday Junkee spoke to some foreign affairs experts who warned that the Olympic tension between Australia and China could have bigger consequences, so you can’t act surprised if it turns out angry Sun Yang fans (or Sun Yang himself) were behind the attack.

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3. Pauline Hanson

We know Pauline Hanson doesn’t like Muslims. We also know that the previous Census showed that there were nearly half a million Muslims living in Australia. What better way to implement a policy of “No Muslims in Australia” then by crashing the Census? If you can’t count them, they don’t exist, right?

The only problem with this theory is that Hanson is unlikely to have the technical resources necessary to take down the Australia Bureau of Statistics’ servers. But maybe she had someone on the inside… someone who ate a dodgy HSP and has harboured a grudge ever since…

hsp

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4. Johnny Depp

We thought he was finally over it, but how very wrong we were. Johnny Depp has gotten the ultimate revenge on Barnaby Joyce and Australia for threatening to murder his pet dogs Pistol and Boo and forcing him into a humiliating apology. “Threaten to kill my dogs, will ya? Try running a country without up-to-date, granular and rich data!” Depp probably said as he pressed enter on the big “EXECUTE HACK” button.

How exactly did a Hollywood movie star take down Australian government servers? Well, he has played a pirate on and off for 13 years. He must have learnt something about the internet in that time.

depp

 

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5. Justin Bieber

It turns out Australia is really good at threatening rich and powerful celebrities. When Bieber toured Australia in 2013 he got into a bit of trouble for spray painting a hotel building on the Gold Coast. The local mayor at the time said to Bieber, “Just come and clean it up and we’ll be happy with you. Alternatively come and sing at our mayoral Christmas carols on 7 December for an hour and I’ll let you go.”

The public humiliation of being threatened with such an obscure and specific punishment has clearly left its mark the millions of Beliebers out there. Unable to handle the fact that Bieber’s music is actually good now (His collaborations with DJ Snake and Diplo are so much better than “Baby”) they’ve snapped and gone rogue, joining forces to wreak havoc on Census night. You know it makes sense.

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So there you have it. The five most likely culprits behind Australia’s Census shutdown. Which one was it? Or was it some sort of super-villain super group, consisting of our ex-PM, a Chinese swimmer, an anti-Islam Senator, an actor that should have quit years ago, and a resurgent pop star?

Now that’s a TV show I’d definitely watch.