CIA Website Allegedly Attacked By LulzSec Hackers

The homepage of the Central Intelligence Agency, http://cia.gov/, appeared to have been suffered an attack from a hacker group on Wednesday evening.

The CIA site would not load properly and website DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com confirmed that the site was down. However, ReadWriteWeb's Curt Hopkins, who notes that he lives across the country from CIA headquarters, said the website appeared "normal."

LulzSec, a hacker group that has attacked the Senate website twice in a week, claimed responsibility for the outage in a tweet.

"Tango down - cia.gov - for the lulz," @LulzSec tweeted around 5:48PM ET.

LulzSec recently announced that it had established a hotline at which it would be accepting requests for new sites and services to target. LulzSec has claimed responsibility for attacks on Sony, gaming company Bethesda, PBS.org, as well as gaming sites Minecraft and League of Legends. The group's motto reads, "Laughing at your security since 2011."

LulzSec has not added the CIA to its list of "releases"--documents containing information taken during its cyber attacks--on its website and it's possible that the group may have brought down the website, though not taken sensitive data from the agency.

Still, the attack is likely to be taken as a serious affront to the CIA, given its national security responsibilities.

"I think the guys at LulzSec may have just made the biggest mistake of their lives," security expert Graham Cluley told the Huffington Post in an email. "The CIA aren't going to like having their nose bloodied like this."

All Things D writes of the alleged denial of service attack, "The site is for all intents and purposes the public face of the agency, so it’s not likely that any classified information is being taken or any sensitive communications disrupted, but attacking government Web sites is a federal crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and probably some other laws I’m not thinking of."

The group said of its previous attack on Senate computers, "We don't like the US government very much. Their boats are weak, their lulz are low, and their sites aren't very secure. In an attempt to help them fix their issues, we've decided to donate additional lulz in the form of owning them some more!"

The CIA was not immediately available for comment.

UPDATE: The CIA.gov website was sporadically accessible around 6PM ET.

Comments

[Tochi Opara]

06:30 PM on 06/16/2011

You fools. It's not "hacking", it's a DDoS attack. DDoS attack has as much to do with hacking as an elephant has to do with flying a plane.

[Sundialsvc4]

04:49 PM on 06/16/2011

Oh, gosh. Oh, golly. Hackers trying to do harm to the CIA. Too bad that the CIA knows nothing at all about such things. Really got caught with their pants down, I am sure. Next they'll be going after the NSA. Those hackers. Really. They're just unstoppable ... Oh, gosh. Oh, golly. Woe is me.

[TheSarge]

04:32 PM on 06/16/2011

DDoS cannon idiots

[chadness]

04:24 PM on 06/16/2011

Wow, really? A DDoS attack on the CIA's public webpage, the one with the "World Factbook?" Ha. That is simply stupid and childish, all you are really doing is asking for trouble. They did nothing to further whatever their cause may be other than to draw massive amounts of attention. These are zit-faced kids sitting in their parents basements. I'm sure all the 'serious' cyber-terrorists are laughing at them.

[nasatristate]

04:12 PM on 06/16/2011

Probably China and they will continue to do so as long as we have a paper lion in the Whitehouse.
Seems like few if any countries respect or fear the US any more, 2012!

[eyeforeye42]

03:49 PM on 06/16/2011

Perhaps if a few hackers found themselves in Guantanamo, there might be a reprieve in attacks. How about just hackers vanishing without a trace. Making hacking a life or death experience might be a bit of a deterrent.

[Michael Rauch]

03:43 PM on 06/16/2011

The hackers are playing with fire now. Pretty serious stuff to take on the CIA. Idealism taking on the real world doesn't always play out that well for the idealists.

[crayola 08b]

03:10 PM on 06/16/2011

Attacked by hackers? whew. for a moment i was afraid it was attacked by crazed wildebeasts.

[VeryGrood]

03:04 PM on 06/16/2011

Old motto: "Laughing at your security since 2011."
New motto: "Too big for our britches since 2011"

[tarzan322]

02:53 PM on 06/16/2011

The article has it right. LulzSec and Anonymous have both been added to NATO's list of who they consider Cyber Terrorist which means that both groups are garnering the wrong type of attention. Both of these groups have overstepped their grounds, and punishment now isn't just simple hacking charges, it's now terrorism charges. You can bet that every country is going to start cooperating a lot more on cracking down on these idiots, which means that overseas anonymous proxies sites will start releasing more and more of their info, and if not, they can always be hacked too. You can run, but you can't hide.

[The Opinionator]

04:58 PM on 06/16/2011

Governments will do everything in their power to hide their own corruption so the cooperation you speak of will still remain along allied lines. These days, exposing corruption is as easy as hacking. I for one, am fed up with the power elite and their righteous attitude. Wall Street should be target #2, right after the Federal Reserve.

[Justgetonwithit]

02:52 PM on 06/16/2011

It is the Chinese hacking us....and they own us...next they will attack Taiwan and pop goes the weasel... you should be shaking in front of your monitor...if you had any sense

[chasinglight2]

02:52 PM on 06/16/2011

I don't believe it. They lie. Another excuse for another war. They want to break the American people through all these wars. Were all ready pushed to the limit. The insanity needs to stop now.

[dbrett480]

02:31 PM on 06/16/2011

I'd be careful about going after the CIA. They probably have some experts that are good at staging non-suspicious deaths.

[twisted8138]

02:10 PM on 06/16/2011

I'm not rooting for these guys, but it does give America a wake up call and maybe look for ways to strengthen our goverment agencies. IIt's like a broken heart, You don't graduate until you get one

[hypnotoad72]

05:17 PM on 06/16/2011

Here's an interesting tidbit: 
The nation's first CIO, supporting initiatives to move government to the cloud and is praised for chopping down $3 million in costs, has decided to take up a teaching job at a university instead.  What perfect timing...

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/kundra-steps-down-as-us-cio-to-new-harvard-job/50867?tag=mantle_skin;content

(he was given quite a job...  now add in the CLOUD, and probably cutting safety corners too...  and then he decides to go teach at some fancy university...  very suspicious timing.)

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/lulzsec-anonymous-and-hacktivism-crappy-security-has-caught-up-with-us/8777

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/lulzsec-leaks-62000-emails-and-passwords-also-targets-cia/50831?tag=content;feature-roto

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/united-states-senate-has-been-hacked-by-lulz-security/50542?tag=mantle_skin;content


1.  get rid of the cloud and put in not just proper security but CLOSED SYSTEMS that the public can't access
2.  in the light of this interesting development, maybe some more background checks are required... and other qualifications

[Warren Peace]

01:37 PM on 06/16/2011

The CIA can't detect the location of these guys and yet the government is ready to treat future cyberattacks as an act of war and attack a whole country over it? If the gov. Can't find "the revenge of the nerds" bunch Lulz, then how can they ask us to go to war with another country in the future because they believe with certainly that they cyber attacked us. Are we suppose to take them at their word.

[sevnwolves]

02:15 PM on 06/16/2011

And you're certain the CIA doesn't ALREADY know exactly where these guys are.....how? www.cia.gov is no more a strategic website than www.icanhascheezburger.com. They accomplished nothing other than to get the CIA looking at them. Very smart move.

[VeryGrood]

03:03 PM on 06/16/2011

How do you know the CIA can't detect the location of these guys?

This was a pretty big gamble for LulzSec... they brought down a fairly useless website- cia.gov probably does not have any secure/confidential on it... but they probably got their attention.

This reminds me of a bully walking around school beating up little kids... He thinks he's tough... he get's a big head.... and then he picks a fight with someone MUCH bigger than him. He may be able to weasel his way out of the fight if he's lucky... but if his new target really wants to pay him back, he's in trouble.

I think this is going to end poorly for LulzSec.