NATIONAL CRIME AGENCY website in shock attack by Lizard Squad cyber criminals.
GETTY HACKED: The UK's NCA website has been attacked by Lizard Squad
The UK's FBI was targeted overnight and their website hit be a distributed denial of service (DDoS) strike – which involves over-loading a website with too much traffic.
Hacking group Lizard Squad is claiming responsibility for attack and has posted a message on Twitter simply saying: "Stressed out?".
This latest hit comes after six teenagers were arrested on suspicion of launching attacks using a service created by the Lizard Squad group.
They have not been named and it has not been confirmed whether their attempted DDoS attacks were successful.
The arrests were made as part of an operation codenamed Vivarium, co-ordinated by the NCA and involving officers from several police forces.
Lizard Squad became infamous for taking down the PlayStation and Xbox Live networks over the Christmas period.
The outages lasted for days and left many fans unable to use their new consoles.
An NCA spokesman said its website is an "attractive target" and attacks are "a fact of life".
He added: "DDoS is a blunt form of attack which takes volume and not skill.
"It
isn't a security breach, and it doesn't affect our operational
capability. At worst, it is a temporary inconvenience to users of our
website.
"We have a duty to balance the value of keeping our
website accessible with the cost of doing so, especially in the face of a
threat which can scale up endlessly.
"The measures we have in
place at present mean that our site is generally up and running again
within 30 minutes, though occasionally it can take longer. We think
that's proportionate."
