Anonymous Attacks UK Home Office Website Protesting Draconian Surveillance Plans

The UK Home Office website had to be taken offline Saturday night following an attack by a hacktivist group claiming to be allied to Anonymous

At 9 p.m. local time, the Twitter account @YourAnonNews reported that in the aftermath of Anonymous' Denial of Service attack the Home Office website was overloaded with traffic and was forced to shut down. A message on the page read: "A communication error occurred," indicating the site was down due to overwhelming traffic loads triggered by DoS attacks. Last week the group warned that the attack would be coming.

Anonymous posted a Twitter message on their home page, claiming to be the perpetrators behind the attack. The message read: "For your draconian surveillance proposals! Told you to # ExpectUs! #ANONYMOUS #AnonUK." As of 10 a.m. Sunday, the website was still offline.

Another Twitter message claimed the attack was in protest over extradition rules from the UK to the US. One such tweet, claiming to be from Anonymous, said: "You should not give UK citizens to foreign countries without evidence. If an offence happened in the UK, so should the trial," according to BBC.

"We are aware of some reports that the Home Office website may be the subject of an online protest. We have put all potential measures in place and will be monitoring the situation very closely," said a Home Office spokesman, according to the Daily Mail. The spokesman asserted that further DoS attacks would be handled by the technical team and proper measure