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Anonymous says it has taken down the website of the C.I.A.

The hactivists have been quick to claim credit for crashing CIA.gov.

THE CIA’S WEBSITE has been hacked, according to hactivist group Anonymous.

TheJournal.ie has not been able to access CIA.gov this evening since spotting the tweet from the Anonymous-affiliated Twitter account at about 8.45pm.

Although the official website of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States seems to be down, there is no way of confirming it is the result of a hacking job by Anonymous.

The tweet earlier today simply read, “CIA Tango Down.” Tango down is a slang term used by military forces to indicate an enemy has been eliminated.

If the site’s downtime is due to a denial-of-service-attack on CIA.gov users, it will be one of the group’s most ambitious moves.

Many Anonymous cyberattacks are carried out by co-ordinating an overwhelming number of visits to one website to overload its servers.

The group has previously targeted the US Department of Justice and the US Copyright Office, as well as Universal Music Group and Warner Music.

As of 22.15pm, the website was still inaccessible.

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49 Comments
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    Mute Sheila Murphy
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    Feb 10th 2012, 9:17 PM

    wonder if they’ve ever heard of the householdchargesignup.com site…… (whatever its URL is)………… ;-)

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    Mute Pat Mullally
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    Feb 10th 2012, 11:32 PM

    Brilliant comment

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    Mute Gavin McGuinness
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    Feb 10th 2012, 11:55 PM

    You can suggest it to them if you wish :P

    They’re are very open to suggestions.

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    Mute Rab MacAonghusa
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    Feb 11th 2012, 12:19 AM

    Oh for God’s sake, just pay your taxes. If it was an income levy to the same degree you wouldn’t see this curfuffle.

    Grow up people.

    37
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    Mute Gavin McGuinness
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    Feb 11th 2012, 1:06 AM

    @Rab MacAonghusa Good boy… do as the nice man tells you. There might be a lollipop in it for you!

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    Mute Sovereign Being
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    Feb 11th 2012, 4:34 AM

    @ Rab, what’s it like being a slave?

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    Mute Aydo
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    Feb 11th 2012, 9:14 AM

    Rab = all that’s wrong with Ireland

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    Mute Sheila Murphy
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    Feb 11th 2012, 10:42 AM

    Rab I DO pay my taxes and I DO pay all my own bills – I don’t have a mortgage – I don’t go on (and never have) holidays I can’t afford – the only thing I bought during the mythical boom was a second hand car which I worked hard and paid for myself – and now I AM EXPECTED to pay for the “we all partied brigade” – Well you know what Rab – WHY THE HELL SHOULD I? (caps not shouting but for emphasis) I’m fed up with being told to “pay my taxes” when I’ve never done ANYTHING but PAY for everything I’ve ever had or bought and I NEVER landed any of my bills on anyone else (what the hell would give me the right to do that???) but yet, I and lots of people in the same position as me are expected to pay for the excessive expenditure of those who partied hard and invested in 2nd/3/rd properties and property abroad, flash clothes, cars, holidays,etc etc etc. During the boom I was called stupid & a fool for not getting involved and now I get snide comments on how “great” I was not to get involved.

    DON’T YOU DARE PREACH TO ME Rab – pay whatever YOU owe; but don’t expect others to PAY FOR YOU.

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    Mute Rab MacAonghusa
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    Feb 11th 2012, 1:43 PM

    It seems a misinterpretation of my comment as sparked some emotional outpour; so allow me to clarify: I wasn’t commenting on whether the household charge is just or not, I was remarking on the peculiar mentality of some who find the single charge an attack on their liberty and yet paid the incomes hikes and levies with little fuss.

    And I found the power of a percentage mark over some rather depressing.

    @’Soverign Being’ – I’ll take ‘slave’ now rather than ‘slave + late payment fee’ later. Or would you prefer tax-evading criminal?

    @Aydo – I would contend that the hard-working, resiliant, tax-payers of Ireland are what is holding this nation together (regardless of whether we deserve it or not) Thankfully we seem to be in the majority – it’s one of the few things that separate us from the Greeks.

    And for the record, I’ve never taken a bank loan in my life.

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    Mute Michael Cuthbert
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    Feb 10th 2012, 9:09 PM

    Why would a secret service have a website anyway?

    110
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    Mute RDX862
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    Feb 10th 2012, 9:50 PM

    Who ever claimed that they were a secret organization? They have public director and a massive headquarters and the US government publicly refers to their reports.

    58
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    Mute michael cuthbert
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    Feb 10th 2012, 9:57 PM

    Right. Not having ever visited the website, just wondering – does it tell us where are the CIA secret interrogation centres across the world? Or how many extraordinary extradition flights have passed through Shannon? Or the CIA’s annual accounts? What they spend on laundry each year, perhaps…

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    Mute ColumLawlorphotography Lawlor
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    Feb 10th 2012, 10:39 PM

    Ha ha..excellent !!!

    31
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    Mute Brian Walsh
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    Feb 10th 2012, 10:46 PM

    There is quite a lot of genuine information on the CIA site, such as the CIA World factbook… normally.

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    Mute michael cuthbert
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    Feb 10th 2012, 11:08 PM

    Ah right. Thanks. So many needless sleepless nights.All behind me now…

    11
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    Mute Simon Power
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    Feb 10th 2012, 11:34 PM

    It’s a secret..

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    Mute Simon Pierse
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    Feb 10th 2012, 9:06 PM

    Tango down means most likely a DDOS and not an actual hack..

    53
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    Mute Gerard Murphy
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    Feb 11th 2012, 12:12 AM

    Maybe someone (a cleaner perhaps) in the CIA office simply unplugged the server?
    It often happens.

    30
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    Mute Gavin McGuinness
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    Feb 10th 2012, 11:57 PM

    It is a shame that most governments see these guys as the enemy!

    They are far from it… they believe in a moral justice which should be respected.

    49
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    Mute Mike Turner
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    Feb 11th 2012, 1:12 AM

    Its a sham, ask urself, who benefits from this? The ordinary citizen who wants internet freedom or governments who do not.
    Que Bono and no im not referring to U2 either.

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    Mute Gavin McGuinness
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    Feb 11th 2012, 1:19 AM

    So we should sit back and take it? Ehh no thanks! I’m happy that I am being represented by these guys and in particular “AnonOpsSweden” who are really looking out for us Irish.

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    Mute Colm Flaherty
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    Feb 11th 2012, 4:24 AM

    Moral justice is great, but respect for law is paramount. Law is law is law. Don’t like the law then change the law & push to get the law changed, don’t break the law.

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    Mute Spud Murphy
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    Feb 11th 2012, 10:34 AM

    I don’t think you’ve quite thought this through.

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    Mute Spud Murphy
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    Feb 11th 2012, 10:37 AM

    (@Colm)

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    Mute Sovereign Being
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    Feb 11th 2012, 2:42 PM

    Colm, your statement is bewildering and I must agree with Spud. Have a little think there about what you said.

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    Mute Brian Daly
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    Feb 12th 2012, 3:07 PM

    @Gavin We live in a peaceful democracy where the current Government were democratically elected by the citizens. If you can justify an external organisation taking intervention at this level, you can justify any type of action.

    If you don’t mind, we the people, will sort out this issue our own way. Anybody has the right to petition their TD on this matter and representative bodies have the ability to make representation.

    Yes we the people make mistakes as we have collectively done over the past 10 years and are now paying for.

    there’s no democracy in removing websites that the taxpayer is paying for or removing the websites of democratically elected officials.

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    Mute Gavin McGuinness
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    Feb 12th 2012, 4:19 PM

    Well respectfully, @Brian Daly, that does not work! You can’t sit back and do nothing. The government do not care what the electorate have to say. That has been proved by the adjustment to the fiscal treaty and Sean Serlocks refusal to a) meet with individuals concerned with the current layout of the SI and his refusal to schedule a full debate in the dail for this issue.

    Alternate protests are all that we have at this moment in time. The Irish public are too laid back! You will never see the same scenes that are on view in Athens here in Dublin.

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    Mute Seán Ó Briain
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    Feb 10th 2012, 9:51 PM

    DoS/DDoS is not hacking. It’s akin to calling someone who kicks their car to try to get it to work, a mechanic.

    42
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    Mute Winston
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    Feb 10th 2012, 10:39 PM

    True enough but it takes some level of coordination to get that many hits on a gov page to cause it to crash!

    42
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    Mute Brian Walsh
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    Feb 11th 2012, 10:54 AM

    I’m not so sure Seán’s right, Anonymous are the biggest and most well known (so to speak) hacking group on the planet and to date only one of them (that we know of) has been caught. This latest attack required a huge “botnet”, a lrge group og computers around the plantet that they had taken control of, each one known as a “zombie”, they were likely planted with a custom made virus so that at a given time each of these “zombie computers” would begin attacking the CIA website, in reality asking it for information requests over and over. The site itself can likely handle hundreds of thousands of hits a day, but not millions of requests for information at the same time, this effectively shuts it down untill its Administrators can find a workaround. Meanwhile when the Powers that Be trace the attack it’ll come from all over the globe, maybe one of your computers was running slow in the past day or so, maybe it was a zombie computer unknown to you, the real attackers, Anonymous, won’t be anywhere near it.

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    Mute Mensah Mensah
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    Feb 10th 2012, 9:13 PM

    Call the CSI gang.,,

    32
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    Mute Fiachra Maolmordha Ó Raghallaigh
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    Feb 10th 2012, 11:32 PM

    You mean using Microsoft Visual Basic to do an IP trace?

    20
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    Mute Simon Power
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    Feb 10th 2012, 11:34 PM

    All fun and games in their Moms basement until they get labelled as “terrorists” and the Patriot Act is evoked. They would want to cover their tracks well. Obama is not as liberal as many think and a Republican, if elected , would have them down as public enemy number 1!

    30
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    Mute Sovereign Being
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    Feb 11th 2012, 4:38 AM

    Stereotype much? What Anonymous do goes way over your head so you attempt to mock them. Typical.

    19
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    Mute Deke Diggler LLM,AO
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    Feb 11th 2012, 12:08 PM

    They are legion.

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    Mute Stadler Waldorf
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    Feb 10th 2012, 10:48 PM

    Yeah but it hardly affects the CIA’s daily operations. Anonymous don’t actually do anything useful, they just make ‘denial of service’ attacks.

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    Mute Aydo
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    Feb 10th 2012, 11:11 PM

    Maybe they highlight some injustice too I think.

    40
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    Mute Gavin McGuinness
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    Feb 11th 2012, 1:09 AM

    So the 10-12 usernames and passwords they got from the DoFAs was from a DDoS?

    Anonymous are capable of a lot more than just DDoS attacks.

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    Mute Emsy wemsy
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    Feb 11th 2012, 9:47 AM

    I’d say this is all just practice that’s leading up to something big no? Just showing what they are capable of so they can make a threat that will feel legitimate enough to have some attention paid……

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    Mute Riaran Coarty
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    Feb 11th 2012, 2:03 PM

    Often they use a DDoS attack to cover what one or two more experienced users will be doing in the background.
    This has been the case during a number of attacks that have resulted in users accounts and personal information being compromised.
    Sony PSN was offline for over a month because of one of these attacks just last April.

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    Mute Martin O Donnell
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    Feb 11th 2012, 2:19 AM

    anon have our backs…people power and about time too

    23
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    Mute Rab MacAonghusa
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    Feb 11th 2012, 3:25 PM

    They’re like our Batmen!

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    Mute Daniel Bohan
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    Feb 11th 2012, 8:29 AM

    They should try turning off back on again…

    18
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    Mute john joe
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    Feb 11th 2012, 3:27 AM

    Ya have to blame the fg/Lb gov for this

    18
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    Mute Richard Dunne
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    Feb 10th 2012, 11:07 PM

    I need to write a visual basic program to track the killers IP address!

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    Mute random
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    Feb 11th 2012, 10:09 AM

    lolwut?

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    Mute Ardo Ci
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    Feb 10th 2012, 11:12 PM

    Yeeeehaaaaaaa!

    9
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    Mute conor hickey
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    Feb 11th 2012, 8:39 AM

    Probably didn’t pay to retain the addy.

    5
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    Mute SeanNorris
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    Feb 11th 2012, 10:40 AM

    Time to get McGee and Abbie on it. they will have the hackers tracked down by the end of the episode!

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