By John Donovan: High tech sophisticated attacks are still targeting this website every few minutes, day and night. Someone with very deep pockets continues to spend a lot of time and resources trying to disrupt and thwart our activities. The associated threats also continue. I wonder when whoever is responsible will realise that their efforts are counter-productive? The underhand cowardly attacks and the related intimidation only makes us more determined to continue operating this entirely non-commercial website focused on the activities of Royal Dutch Shell Plc. Shell has denied any involvement or knowledge of the covert activity. We are aware that Shell has been in past contact with the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance in Pittsburgh (of which Shell is a member) in an attempt to block our outspoken activities. This was triggered by Shell Oil Company in a panicked reaction to our contact with Bill O’Reilly of Fox News regarding Shell’s linkage with Iran – an extremely sensitive subject.
Cyber-attacks
Update on cyber-espionage attacks
Cyber attacks on Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com website: perpetrators risk JAIL
Breaking News… Thursday 24 January 2013:
A 22-year-old is jailed for 18 months for carrying out cyber attacks with hacking group Anonymous. Christopher Weatherhead, of Holly Road, Northampton, was convicted last month for taking part in distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks on sites including Visa, Mastercard and PayPal.
He was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court along with Ashley Rhodes, 28, who was jailed for seven months after pleading guilty.
The pair were charged with conspiring to impair the operation of computers between August 1, 2010 and January 22, 2011.
Co-defendant Peter Gibson, 24, of Castletown Road, Hartlepool, was deemed to have played a lesser role in the conspiracy, which he also admitted, and given a six-month suspended sentence.
Jake Birchall, 18, from Chester, will be sentenced on February 1. He had also admitted the conspiracy.
Constant attacks on the website royaldutchshellplc.com
For over a year we have received attacks on the site in the form of massive numbers of blog entries being received. They have recently reached a level whereby legitimate blogs are crowded out, effectively blocking criticism against Shell.
EMAIL SENT 11 NOVEMBER 2012 BY JOHN DONOVAN TO MR MICHIEL BRANDJES, COMPANY SECRETARY & GENERAL COUNSEL CORPORATE, ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC
From: John Donovan <[email protected]>
Subject: Constant attacks on the website royaldutchshellplc.com
Date: 11 November 2012 15:29:54 GMT
To: [email protected]
Dear Mr Brandjes
I would like to bring another serious matter to your attention.
I refer to the constant attacks on our website royaldutchshellplc.com.
There are three strands to the activity.
DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACKS
The first is denial of service attacks where the site is flooded with traffic. We have upgraded our server a number of times in an effort to deal with these attacks, but the scale is such that even our latest high capacity dedicated server has crashed due to massive spikes in traffic, which cannot be due to normal activity.
Oil cyber-attacks could cost lives, Shell warns
12 December 2011
The oil industry has been warned that cyber-attacks could “cost lives” and cause “huge damage”.
Ludolf Luehmann, an IT manager for Shell, told the World Petroleum Conference in Doha that the company had suffered an increased number of attacks.
He said the hacks had been motivated by both commercial and criminal intent.
Security researcher David Emm said that such attacks were “not only possible, but they’re now real”.
Mr Luehmann said Shell and others in the industry were experiencing a “new dimension” of attack which could leave physical machinery at serious risk.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc .com hit by hackers from China?
By John Donovan
We have published articles from time to time reporting apparent denial of service attacks on this website e.g.
Royal Dutch Shell Plc.com website under cyber attack (17 December 2010)
A few days ago, on 6 February, we published an article under the headline…
Overnight crippling load on Royal Dutch Shell plc.com website
We stated :
“As regular visitors will be aware, this website, which is operated on a dedicated high traffic server hosted in the USA, is being brought down on a regular basis.”
EBOOK TITLE: “SIR HENRI DETERDING AND THE NAZI HISTORY OF ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON
EBOOK TITLE: “JOHN DONOVAN, SHELL’S NIGHTMARE: MY EPIC FEUD WITH THE UNSCRUPULOUS OIL GIANT ROYAL DUTCH SHELL” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
EBOOK TITLE: “TOXIC FACTS ABOUT SHELL REMOVED FROM WIKIPEDIA: HOW SHELL BECAME THE MOST HATED BRAND IN THE WORLD” – AVAILABLE ON AMAZON.
