Wednesday, June 15, 2011

CIA website goes down, hackers claim responsibility


BOSTON (Reuters) - The public website of the Central Intelligence Agency went down on Wednesday evening as the hacker group Lulz Security said it had launched an attack. Lulz Security has claimed responsibility for recent attacks on the Senate, Sony Corp, News Corp and the U.S. Public Broadcasting System television network. The CIA site initially could not be accessed from New York to San Francisco, and Bangalore to London. Later in the evening service was sporadic. "We are looking into these reports," a CIA spokeswoman said.

Lulz Security has defaced websites, posted personal information about customers and site administrators, and disclosed the network configurations of some sites. Security analysts have downplayed the significance of these attacks, saying the hackers are just looking to show off and get as much attention as possible. "All they're doing is saying 'Look how good we are,'" Carr said. "These guys are literally in it for embarrassment, to say 'your security is crap.'" Lulz only made claims that it attacked www.cia.gov, and there was no evidence on Wednesday evening that sensitive data in the agency's internal computer network had been compromised.

Although the group, also known as Lulz Boat, fashions itself more as pranksters and activists than people with sinister intent, its members have been accused of breaking the law and are wanted by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. Lulz broke into a public website of the Senate over the weekend and released data stolen from the legislative body's computer servers.

In May, the group posted a fake story on the PBS website saying that rapper Tupac Shakur was still alive and living in New Zealand. Shakur was murdered in 1996.

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