"Tango down - soca.gov.uk - in the name of AntiSec," the hacker group known as Lulz Security said in a message on its Twitter feed @lulzsec today.
"Tango down" refers to the elimination of an enemy while "AntiSec" refers to "Operation Anti-Security," a campaign launched by Lulz Security against government websites.
Computer security firm Sophos said the SOCA website was sporadically inaccessible on Monday following the Lulz Security attack.
Sophos said it appeared to be a distributed denial of service attack in which a website is overwhelmed with traffic and becomes sluggish or unresponsive.
Lulz knocked the CIA's public website, cia.gov, out of commission for about two hours last week using a DDoS attack and also hacked into the US Senate's public website.
The group has also released tens of thousands of user names and passwords stolen from Sony and other sites.
Also today, Lulz said it had compromised the security of more than 1000 accounts of an FBI partner organisation in Connecticut.
Lulz said it attacked a local section of InfraGard, a partnership between the FBI and the private sector to share security information. InfraGard's website was down today.
The FBI was aware of the attack and that the website had been shut down as a precaution, agency spokeswoman Jenny Shearer said. She declined to comment on the extent of any damage.
Lulz tweeted last night that its Connecticut attack had "compromised 1000 (plus) FBI-affiliated members".
The group said it would not leak the user information but would embarrass the FBI with "simple hacks." It did not provide details on the information it said was compromised.
After announcing the Connecticut attack, the group issued a statement calling for a united hacker effort against governments and organisations that control the internet.
"Our Lulz Lizard battle fleet is now declaring immediate and unremitting war on the freedom-snatching moderators of 2011," the group said in the statement, which was written in its characteristic rambling speech.
The group said it was teaming with another hacker collective, Anonymous, and encouraged others to fight corruption and attack any government or agency that "crosses their path" including banks and other "high-ranking establishments".
Anonymous is a group of online activists that has claimed responsibility for attacking companies online such as Visa, MasterCard and PayPal over their severing of ties with WikiLeaks following that group's release of troves of sensitive documents.
Anonymous also led a campaign against the Church of Scientology.
Lulz has taken credit for hacking into the PlayStation Network of Sony Corp, where more than 100 million user accounts were compromised, and defacing the PBS television network website after it aired a documentary seen as critical of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
The hackers also say they are responsible for attacks on the CIA webpage and the US Senate computer system.
- with The Associated Press
SOURCE : heraldsun.com.au
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