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Wednesday 25 April 2012

CIA site downed as Anonymous claims attack - 24 Apr 2012

The cia.gov site was unavailable around 3.50pm ET, allegedly due to a Denial of Service(DOS)-attack from hackers affiliated with the group UGNazi.
The site block was initially claimed by Anonymous after the group tweeted: "CIA TANGO DOWN", but later it admitted fellow hacktivists UGNazi had instead brought down the site.
By 6pm cia.gov was back up and running.
The CIA did not confirm the attack but said they were "looking into these reports".
Hacktivists also reportedly attacked the website for the United Nations.

During the attacks, personal data from court records in Alabama was reportedly “exposed” as well as emails from a Mexican mining company.
The stolen data was allegedly relating to 46,000 people who had taken part in a court amnesty for overdue traffic tickets and other fines.
It included home addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and social security numbers, hackers claimed on social media site Twitter.

The group said the attack was in response to the state of Alabama’s "recent racist legislation in an attempt to punish immigrants as criminals", CNN said.

This is not the first time the CIA website has been attacked by hackers.
Last month the site went offline temporarily around the same time, 3pm on a Friday afternoon, with Anonymous claiming credit for the attack.

Anonymous hackers have also targeted the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.


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.

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