Anonymous takes credit for crashing CIA website

By Rue Liu/Feb. 10, 2012 5:06 pm EST

Notorious hacker group Anonymous is claiming credit for taking down the CIA's website today, which went offline for about an hour. A public website for the state of Alabama was also knocked down by hackers today, says a state official.

Around Eastern time 3:30pm, Anonymous posted via its Twitter account the following tweet: "CIA TANGO DOWN: https://www.cia.gov/ #Anonymous." The CIA website had become unresponsive likely due to a distribute denial of service (DDoS) type of attack that the hacker group commonly launches against its targets.

Following the recent MegaUpload shutdown, those targets have included websites belonging to the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the US Copyright Office. Anonymous also recently intercepted a call between the FBI and Scotland Yard in which the two agencies discussed investigations into the hacker group's activities.

[via PCMag]