Soca attack: Serious Organised Crime Agency site taken down
The website of the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) has been taken offline following a cyber attack.
The Soca website has been targeted and taken offline in the past
Soca confirmed to the BBC that soca.gov.uk had suffered a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.
A spokesman said the site was taken offline at 22:30 on Wednesday, but that the attack did not "pose a security risk to the organisation".
Soca has recently closed 36 websites believed to be selling stolen credit card information.
'No security risk'
"We took action to limit the impact on other clients hosted by the [same] service provider," the spokesman said.
"DDoS attacks are a temporary inconvenience to website visitors but do not pose a security risk.
"Soca's website contains only publicly available information and does not provide access to operational material."
Soca would not confirm if it knew the source or motive of the attack.
A distributed denial-of-service attack is a common techinque in which sites are overloaded with data requests, causing it to fall over.
Last month, Soca was part of a joint effort with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to shut websites associated with selling stolen financial information.
Soca said 2.5 million items of compromised data was recovered, preventing an estimated potential fraud of £500m.
The website has been targeted in the past by members of "hacktivist" group LulzSec. In June 2011, they forced the site offline using similar tactics.
Alleged members of the group were subsequently arrested in connection with the attack.
3 May 2012 Last updated at 12:28
BBC © 2012
BBC News - Soca attack: Serious Organised Crime Agency site taken down
The website of the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) has been taken offline following a cyber attack.
The Soca website has been targeted and taken offline in the past
Soca confirmed to the BBC that soca.gov.uk had suffered a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.
A spokesman said the site was taken offline at 22:30 on Wednesday, but that the attack did not "pose a security risk to the organisation".
Soca has recently closed 36 websites believed to be selling stolen credit card information.
'No security risk'
"We took action to limit the impact on other clients hosted by the [same] service provider," the spokesman said.
"DDoS attacks are a temporary inconvenience to website visitors but do not pose a security risk.
"Soca's website contains only publicly available information and does not provide access to operational material."
Soca would not confirm if it knew the source or motive of the attack.
A distributed denial-of-service attack is a common techinque in which sites are overloaded with data requests, causing it to fall over.
Last month, Soca was part of a joint effort with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to shut websites associated with selling stolen financial information.
Soca said 2.5 million items of compromised data was recovered, preventing an estimated potential fraud of £500m.
The website has been targeted in the past by members of "hacktivist" group LulzSec. In June 2011, they forced the site offline using similar tactics.
Alleged members of the group were subsequently arrested in connection with the attack.
3 May 2012 Last updated at 12:28
BBC © 2012
BBC News - Soca attack: Serious Organised Crime Agency site taken down
