Oldest Hacking Group In Europe Blocked By UK Web Filter

The Great Firewall of Britain (also called The Great Firewall of Cameron) has blocked internet users in the United Kingdom from accessing Chaos Computer Club’s (CCC) website.

CCC, one of the oldest hacking groups in existence, confirmed the blocking on its website and the information quickly spread across the web.

“A significant portion of British citizens are currently blocked from accessing the Chaos Computer Club’s (CCC) website. On top of that, Vodafone customers are blocked from accessing the ticket sale to this year’s Chaos Communication Congress (31C3)”, it says on the CCC website.

The post says that, since July 2013, the government has backed a so-called opt out list that censors the open internet. The filters are implemented by UK’s major ISPs and serve to block “adult content as well as material related to alcohol, drugs, smoking, and even opinions deemed extremist”.

CCC claims that this might not be a case of overblocking and wrongly classifying websites, “a common phenomenon in large censorship infrastructures”, but rather that CCC is considered “extremist” by British standards of free speech.

“When these filters were introduced, their abuse was imminent. Today, we are shocked to learn that they not only block access to our site, but also to our conference,” says CCC-spokesperson Dirk Engling.

“We see this as proof that censorship infrastructure – no matter for which reasons it was set up, and no matter which country you are in – will always be abused for political reasons.”

Users can opt-out of censorship, or bypass it by other means, but only a minority knows how to bypass the blockade, says CCC.

The post adds that the block is faulty, and can easily be bypassed by typing the IP address of the site 213.73.89.123 instead of the URL.