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NCA targeted by Lizard Squad in apparent DDoS revenge attack

The National Crime Agency’s website has been hit by a DDoS attack, in an apparent act of revenge for the body’s recent crackdown on users of Lizard Squad.

The site was taken down this morning and remained offline at the time of publication.

Last week the NCA arrested six people on suspicion of maliciously deploying Lizard Stresser, which allows users to pay to take websites offline for up to eight hours.

Officers are also visiting approximately 50 addresses linked to individuals registered on the Lizard Stresser website, but who are not currently believed to have carried out attacks.

At 9am this morning Lizard Squad tweeted a picture of the NCA’s logo and the caption “stressed out?” seemingly in reference to its recent operation.

An NCA spokesman said:

The NCA website is an attractive target. Attacks on it are a fact of life. 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.

He added: “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.” ®

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Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/01/nca_targeted_by_lizard_squad/

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