MOSCOW (Sputnik) — An anti-Islamist hacker group claimed responsibility on Saturday for an online attack on the BBC that knocked its website offline on New Year’s Eve, the UK state broadcaster said.
It cited a message by New World Hacking, a group that allegedly fights Islamic State (ISIL or Daesh) online, which said the hackers had targeted the BBC website to test their strength.
"It was only a test, we didn't exactly plan to take it down for multiple hours. Our servers are quite strong… Our motive was simply because we can," the group said in a series of messages to the BBC.
The group is said to have tweeted BBC correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, saying it was based in the United States and sought to take down websites affiliated with Daesh.
The BBC site was largely inaccessible for several hours on Thursday after it came under distributed denial of service attack (DDoS), which floods a website with Internet traffic.
