Anti-ISIS group claims cyber-attack on BBC

A group of U.S.-based cyber hackers who state that they are anti-ISIS have claimed responsibility for the hack attack on BBC website on the New Year’s Eve.

Mr Cellan-Jones ‏tweeted a message he received from NWH on the DDoS which said: “It was only a test, we didn’t exactly plan to take it down for multiple hours”.

If New World Hacking’s claims are true, it will be the latest in a long list of cyber attacking collectives aiming to hit Isis, its supporters and other terror groups.

A source told The Times: ‘It was a denial of service attack to crash down our sites.

NWH claimed it targeted the BBC to test the power of its own servers.

And some sources at BBC believe it was a “distributed denial of service” attack.

“We’re aware of a technical issue affecting the BBC website and are working to fix this now”, the BBC tweeted at the start of the outage.

According to the BBC, the group emailed a message to technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones which said: “We are based in the United States, but we strive to take down Isis [IS] affiliated websites, also Isis members”.

New World Hacking claimed its supporters used two nodes to attack the BBC and dedicated servers as a “test of its capabilities” before moving to target terrorists and supporters.

While the BBC acknowledged that there had been a “technical problem” with its online services on Thursday, it has not commented on whether this came as the result of a DDoS attack or not. “Our servers are quite strong”, the group said in a message to the BBC.

It is now back online and the corporation is now investigating the cause of the outage.

‘What this group does is to take down various different websites it believes to be criminal and leading to terrorist acts.