Hacker group LulzSec yesterday took down the CIA's website, in a bold move to provoke the U.S. government "for laughs" while adding to a string of recent worldwide cyber-crimes.
The group, which attacked cia.gov, didn't gain access to any sensitive data on the agency's internal networks. They also hacked the Senate's website again, in addition to flooding the FBI with forwarded calls.
The CIA has deemed the attacks merely an annoyance, but say they are investigating.
"We are looking into the matter," said CIA spokesman Preston Golson.
Breaching governmental websites is a federal crime punishable by fines and up to 20 years in prison, but LulzSec is laughing over its allegedly simple CIA break-in.
"People are saying our CIA attack was the biggest yet, but it was really a very simple packet flood," the hacking group stated. LulzSec is on the FBI's wanted list, though thus far its members have evaded law enforcement officials.
The hacker group's latest exploit may not be its biggest by volume -- that prize goes to its attack on Bethesda Software -- but this hack is akin to hitting a hornet's nest. The CIA is unlikely to sit idly by and let itself be targeted again.
LulzSec's admission of the CIA and Senate hacks is especially unusual given that hackers regularly boast of smaller exploits, but few come forward to claim responsibility for serious attacks.
The recent hacks against Lockheed Martin, Citigroup, International Monetary Fundand Epsilon, among others, remain anonymous.
No one has claimed responsibility for Sony's initial and biggest security breach, which exposed 100 million users' information, but hackers have perpetrated and acknowledged multiple, smaller breaches against the company since then.
LulzSec has hit Sony multiple times, plus attacking Nintendo, PBS, a porn site, World of Warcraft and various gaming sites.
The organization is not alone in its mission to wreak destruction on official and corporate sites. The hacktivist group Anonymous, which some believe gave birth to LulzSec, recently downed police sites in Spain after authorities arrested three of its members.
The group is well-known for recently launching distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attacks against the likes of Turkey's government, Sony, and major credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard after they denied payments to WikiLeaks' leader Julian Assange.
Highly-publicized online attacks on governmental institutions and major corporations have become almost commonplace in the months since Sony's initial debacle, as hackers spin off of others' exploits. If this trend suggests anything, it's that such hacks will remain in the news for some time to come.
In more hijinks, LulzSec also released online 62,000 emails and passwords of users of Gmail, Yahoo, PayPal, Hotmail and other sites.