CIA site downed as Anonymous claims attack

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Published time: April 23, 2012 22:09
Edited time: April 24, 2012 06:35

The CIA website is now back online following a DDoS attack reportedly perpetrated by the hacktivist group Anonymous. This is the latest attack in a series of assaults carried out against US government websites.

­­Information that the website was down was originally relayed by the OccupyCarlisle account. The UGNazi hacker group has also claimed responsibility for the attack.

Just one week ago Brazilian hacktivist Havittaja claimed responsibility for a DDoS attack on the websites of the US Department of Justice and the CIA. Other Anonymous hacktivists later joined their "Brazilian brother" and brought down two MI6 websites.

The CIA website was also downed by Anonymous on two occasions before that, in February 2012 and back in June 2011.

The February attack was part of Anonymous' action against US law enforcement agencies and copyright holders. Other targeted websites included the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. Anonymous was quick to claim responsibility then.

The CIA website took several hours to get back online, while the Department of Homeland Security went back up online in a matter of minutes. 

Following the attack an alleged Anonymous hacktivist uploaded a video explaining how the community had crushed the agency's online presence and why the CIA should have been ready.

DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks are a concentrated effort by multiple individuals to make a network overly busy. As a result, the website gets overloaded and goes down. DDoS attacks breach the Internet Architecture Board's proper use policy.

It is customary for tweets referring to Anonymous DDoS attacks to be accompanied by a "Tango Down" hash tag. Originally the term was used by special forces to say that an enemy had been eliminated.