Traditionally known as F*ckFBIFriday, this weekend's eve turned into
F*ckCIAFriday, as hacktivists downed the official website for the
Central Intelligence Agency of the United States cia.gov.
At approximately 3:10 p.m. Eastern time one of twitter accounts
related to the hackers' group announced "cia.gov DOWN.
#UMAD?#Anonymous."
The CIA website became the latest victim
in a series of attacks conducted by the elusive group of hackers against
US law enforcement agencies and copyright holders. As RT reported
earlier, Anonymous took credit for crashing the websites of the US
Department of Homeland Security, which was quickly revived, and the FBI.
The
CIA seems to be less prepared for fighting Anonymous than other
agencies. If the work of dhs.gov was revived in mere minutes, the CIA's
site was still down even hours after the attack. One of the twitter
accounts affiliated with Anonymous explained the reasons of the attack:
"We do it for the lulz," referring to the popular online abbreviation
"for laughs."
In previous occasions Anonymous has orchestrated humiliating assaults with massive distributed denial of services attacks.
The
technique also known as a DDoS, is a concentrated effort by multiple
individuals to make a network busy to its intended users. The end
results in a server overload
Even though DDoS attacks are a
violation of the Internet Architecture Boards’s proper use policy, it
has become an effective tool for Anonymous to spread online mayhem.
Two
weeks ago, the online group also released the audio of a conference
call between the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Britain’s
Scotland Yard counterpart targeting members of the largely untraceable
group. It was done as part of the F*ckFBIFriday campaign.
Along
with the secret audio leak, numerous sites fell prey to Anonymous’
crippling assault including several entertainment industry giants and
government sites.
The websites for the US Department of Justice
and Universal Music Group were among the first to go, with the sites for
US Copyright Office, Warner Music, BMI, and RIAA following suit shortly
after.
These attacks were in retaliation for a raid on
Megaupload, where the feds raided the file sharing service site which
led to more than 20 warrants being served and several arrests
internationally.
This is not the first time Anonymous takes down
cia.gov. In June, as part of a 51-day-long hacking spree, the Anonymous
affiliated group LulzSec took down the CIA's site for a few hours. The
reason was the same as today: "For the lulz."
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