Cyberattackers target U.K. crime agency with DDoS attack days after arrests

The U.K.’s National Crime Agency (NCA), an organization established to combat serious and organized crime, has been targeted in a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, claimed by the hacking collective known as the Lizard Squad.

The NCA’s website was down for more than an hour. The attack comes less than a week after six teenagers were arrested in the U.K. for allegedly paying for access to the same tool used by Lizard Squad to target Xbox Live and PlayStation Network (PSN) last year.

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GamesBeat reported on the initial attacks last Christmas, and the FBI revealed it was investigating Lizard Squad for forcing the game networks offline. A number of arrests were subsequently made — including that of a 22-year-old man in London and a teenager based near Liverpool.

A DDoS attack is when the target — in this case, the NCA website — is overwhelmed with a deluge of data, thus causing the network to crash. The Lizard Squad Twitter account was quick to align itself with today’s attack.

https://twitter.com/LizardLands/status/638617494702399488

The NCA issued a statement in the wake of the DDoS attack, taking time to pour scorn on the attack by calling it a “blunt form of attack which takes volume and not skill.”

https://twitter.com/joetidy/status/638642381017993217

The timing of the attack on the NCA website is notable given the proximity to the latest wave of arrests, though it’s not entirely clear whether those arrests included anyone directly affiliated with the Lizard Squad collective — the group recently claimed it did not.

What is clear, however, is that Lizard Squad is still very active, and the NCA still has a lot of work to do if it’s to catch those who have claimed responsibility for a number of high-profile cyberattacks dating back more than a year.