LONDON: A group of hackers on Tuesday claimed they had downed the website of Britain’s lead law enforcement agency after it arrested six people over similar attacks.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) website was offline for around an hour after suffering a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, claimed by hacking group Lizard Squad.

On its Twitter page, the group posted the message: “Stressed out? http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/#offline”, superimposed with the NCA logo.

A DDoS attack cripples the target website by barraging it with automated requests from many different sources, making it almost impossible to prevent.

The NCA called the attack a “temporary inconvenience” and denied it was a security breach. “The NCA is an attractive target,” it said in a statement.

“DDoS is a blunt form of attack which takes volume not skill. It isn’t a security breach and it doesn’t affect our operational capability”. Given the cost of trying to repel such attacks, the agency claimed that its current measures were “proportionate”.

Published in Dawn, September 2nd, 2015

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