Pierluigi Paganini January 02, 2016

A group of hackers named “New World Hackers” claims the DDoS attack on BBC’s website. They launched it to test their attack capabilities.

On December 31th, the BBC website and iPlayer service went down due to a major “distributed denial of service” attack.”

The attack started at 0700 GMT and paralyzed the websites for more than hour causing the panic among users on the social media.

The technology correspondent at the British Broadcasting Company, Rory Cellan-Jones, confirmed that the issue was caused by an external attack and not by a glitch.

“Sources – BBC suffered a DdOS – a distributed denial of service attack. But services are now being restored” Tweeted Rory Cellan-Jones.

Anyway, the company hasn’t confirmed or denied the news of a DDoS attack against its systems.

Who is behind the attack?

Broadcasting companies like the BBC are a privileged target for cyber criminals, hackers, nation-state actors and terrorists. This is a difficult period so when users saw the error message displayed on the BBC websites their first thought was for the ISIS.

However, members of the IS did not have claimed the attack, instead, a group of Anti-ISIS hackers calling itself New World Hacking has claimed the responsibility for the BBC attack.

According to a post published by the BBC, Hackers of the New World Hacking said they had launched the attack as a “test of its capabilities”.

Message to me from New World Hackers on BBC DDoS : “It was only a test, we didn’t exactly plan to take it down for multiple hours”

— Rory Cellan-Jones (@ruskin147) 2 Gennaio 2016

The Hackers of the New World Hacking group contacted the Rory Cellan-Jones via Twitter, below an image caption of the messages he received.

In a tweet to Rory Cellan-Jones, the New World Hacking group said they are based in US and they use their abilities to target Isis [IS] affiliated websites.

“We are based in the US, but we strive to take down Isis [IS] affiliated websites, also Isis members.

“We realise sometimes what we do is not always the right choice, but without cyber hackers… who is there to fight off online terrorists?

Earlier, New World Hacking had said: “It was only a test, we didn’t exactly plan to take it down for multiple hours. Our servers are quite strong.”

Stay Tuned!

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – BBC, DDoS attack)

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