High-profile hacktivist group claims CIA website shutdown

On the same day the group opened a telephone request line so its fans could suggest potential targets, the hack on CIA.gov allegedly occurred, announced on its Twitter feed: "Tango down - cia.gov - for the lulz".

The CIA website was inaccessible at times on Wednesday but appeared to be back up on Thursday. The hack claim could not immediately be verified.

LulzSec’s latest claim follows in the wake of earlier alleged hacking attacks on prominent targets on the American and International platform, among which are gaming colossi Sony and Nintendo, along with several US broadcasters, and the public-facing site of the US Senate.

On Wednesday, LulzSec claimed to have launched denial of service attacks on several websites as a result of opening its "request line", although it gave no  further details.

The claim regarding the CIA.gov website emerged only a few hours later. A CIA spokesman told the Associated Press the agency was "looking into" the report. LulzSec publicised the details of its telephone hotline on its Twitter feed.

Callers to the US number are met with a recorded message, in a heavy French accent, by an individual calling himself Pierre Dubois. While the 614 area code appears to relate to the state of Ohio, it is unlikely that this is its real location, the BBC reports.

Lulz Security said it had used distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) against eight sites suggested by callers, and also claimed to have hit the websites of gaming magazine The Escapist, and online multiplayer games EVE Online and League of Legends.

DDoS attacks typically involve crashing a website by inundating it with requests from computers under the attacker's control.

Lulz Security are rumoured to be loosely linked to Anonymous – both being "hacktivist" groups who perform cyber attacks on targets that they perceive to be deserving of such attacks due to alleged mistreatments of the public or consumers.

Its high-profile attack on SonyPictures.com exposed the company's ongoing inability to secure users' personal data, LulzSec claimed. Along with Anonymous, LulzSec has raised the profile of hacker groups as a potential threat to online services.

Hacktivists see their role as staging valid protests in the most high profile way possible, according to Peter Wood, founder of security consultancy First Base.

"The things they are exploiting at the moment are the sort of mistakes that organisations seem to have been making ever since they connected to the internet.

"Finally there are some players out there who are using them as a means to protest. Whether everyone agrees with them is a different question."