Hackers claiming an affiliation with Anonymous took credit for crashing the Central Intelligence Agency’s Web site Friday, in what appears to be another distributed denial-of-service attack.
The CIA’s Web site was inaccessible around 3:30 on Friday afternoon.
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Preston Golson, a spokesman for the CIA, told The Post in an e-mailed statement, “We are looking into these reports.”
The hacking collective has targeted several government sites in recent weeks, including the Web site of the Department of Justice and an announced attack on the White House’s Web site.
Previous attacks were said to be in retaliation for online piracy legislation; it was not immediately apparent why Anonymous chose to target the CIA on Friday, though members of the group have been central in planning a day of protest against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), an online piracy agreement signed by several European officials.
Legal scholars have said the treaty has implications for the United States, as well. The Obama administration has already agreed to ACTA through an executive agreement, an act that Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) challenged in October. Wyden said that ACTA is a treaty that has implications for U.S. intellectual property law and should have been ratified by the House and Senate. For its part, the Obama administration has said that it does not believe ACTA’s implementation would have any effect on U.S. law.
Related stories:
ACTA and the case of the SOPA undead
European parliament’s ACTA monitor quits in protest
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