The Justice Department is treating an apparent distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on its website by the group Anonymous in the wake of the arrest of employees of the file-sharing website MegaUpload.com as a “malicious act,” a DOJ spokeswoman said in a statement.
“The Department of Justice web server hosting justice.gov is currently experiencing a significant increase in activity, resulting in a degradation in service,” a DOJ spokeswoman said in a statement to TPM. “The Department is working to ensure the website is available while we investigate the origins of this activity, which is being treated as a malicious act until we can fully identify the root cause of the disruption.”
Several government websites and websites of various entertainment industry associations started experiencing issues this afternoon following the arrest of MegaUpload employees. Twitter accounts affiliated with the loosely affiliated group Anonymous have claimed responsibility for the attacks.
As TPM explained here, DOJ has criminally charged those allegedly behind DDoS attacks in the past.
Ryan J. Reilly
Ryan J. Reilly is a D.C.-based reporter for TPM. Prior to joining TPM, he worked for a news website covering the Justice Department and was a researcher for Bloomberg News. His email address is ryan(at)talkingpointsmemo.com.
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