Anonymous's social network hacked

Anonplus, the nascent social network from hacktivist group Anonymous, has itself fallen foul of a hacker.

Anonymous decided to launch the service because as a group rather than an individual it could not join Google+ – according to the membership conditions of the site.

However, Anonplus was hacked recently by a Turkish group, which defaced the front page of the service and berated Anonymous for "rising up against the world".

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the attack is that Anonymous members apparently are unable to secure their own websites, falling foul of the sort of lax security that it circumnavigates to launch its own attacks.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at security firm Sophos, said on his blog: "You would expect active members of the Anonymous collective to know a thing or two about elementary computer security, but clearly their site had vulnerabilities or someone was sloppy in their choice of password if rivals were able to break in and change the content."

Before Anonplus was hacked, its front page advertised for Java developers.

A forum at Anonsource Technologies, used by Anonymous to advertise for coders for Anonplus, indicates that development has temporarily stopped as a result of the attack.

In June, Anonymous launched "Operation Turkey", bringing down several Turkish government websites in protest against its plans to introduce internet filtering; this may have provided motivation for the attack.

Anonplus is still down at the time of writing.