Hackers who hit BBC ‘were targeting Isil’

HACKERS who say they target activity linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) have claimed responsibility for a cyber-attack on the BBC which knocked its network of websites offline.

New World Hacking was reportedly “testing” its systems when it flooded the corporation with traffic on Thursday. It told the BBC yesterday: “We are based in the US, but we strive to take down Isis [Isil] 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?

“The reason we really targeted [the] BBC is because we wanted to see our actual server power.”

New World Hacking also posted a message on its Twitter feed yesterday reiterating Isil was the main target.

On New Year’s Eve, thousands of users trying to access BBC sites were met by a message saying there had been an “internal error”.

Problems continued for around an hour before the service was fully restored.

It later emerged the corporation had suffered a DDoS – a distributed denial of service – attack.

A National Crime Agency spokesman said: “DDOS is a blunt form of attack which takes volume and not skill. It’s a very basic attack tool.

“One analogy is too many people trying to get through a revolving door at the same time, so that the door gets stuck.”

The BBC has not confirmed or denied that such an attack caused the problems.