U.K.'s SOCA Web site targeted in DDoS attack
The organization's Web site was also taken down by a DDoS attack back in June when LulzSec allegedly took aim at the organization.
It's been a tough year for the U.K.'s Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA).
The organization confirmed to TechWeekEurope today that its site has once again become the target of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, and has been forced to take its site offline to "limit the impact" of the threat.
"Clearly the things we'd like to stress are that the SOCA website contains only publicly available information, it does not provide access to operational material," a SOCA spokesperson told TechWeekEurope. "DDoS attacks cause a temporary inconvenience to website visitors, they don't impose a security risk to the organization. We will monitor the situation and put the site back up when it is appropriate to do so."
SOCA was the first target of the AntiSec campaign launched back in June by Anonymous and LulzSec. Soon after, 19-year-old Ryan Cleary was arrested and charged with allegedly playing a role in the DDoS attack that took down the SOCA Web site. Since then, the site was seemingly operating as expected.
It's not currently clear who might have targeted SOCA or why the organization might have been the subject of another attack. Security firm Sophos is reporting, however, that it might have something to do with SOCA's decision last month to shut down 36 Web sites accused of selling credit card numbers.
The SOCA Web site is still offline. The organization has not announced when its site might go back up.