BBC faced a shut down for over an hour of their website on New Year’s eve due to t DDOS attack. Previously unknown, the people behind the attack have released a statement, stating that they are a US-based group called New World Hacking which is an anti-ISIL group, The Telegraph reports. 

On Thursday, 31 December, users trying to access BBC’s website were faced with an error message that there was an internal error and access to content was not granted. The problem persisted for over an hour, with BBC releasing an official statement in the meantime to apologise for the inconvenience caused to users. The problem, though, was fixed finally. The issue was identified to be a DDOS or a Distributed Denial of Service attack.

After more than a day has passed, a US-based group called New World Hacking have claimed that they were the ones who caused the outage of BBC’s website on New Year’s Eve. New World Hacking released official statements on social media platform Twitter, saying that they are a group that acts against online activities related to the Islamic State.

The attack on BBC’s website, though, was merely a test of their ability. They said that they did not have any idea that the website would be down for more than an hour. New World Hacking simply said that they wanted to test their server power in their battle against the IS.

The US-based group also apologise for using DDOS, a cyber-attack, as a test on a global media website and said that although they understand that hacking is not always ethical, it is quite necessary to hunt down and stamp out illegal activity on the internet. They claim that they are out to fight the IS on the internet.

Earlier, we had covered the issue, expressing our concern over the attack on the BBC. People were on edge because earlier in April 2015 the IS had taken over the channels television broadcasting and hosted the message ‘Je Suis IS’ on their channel, leaving viewers stunned. This is the second time that the BBC has been embarrassed due to activity related to the IS, albeit this time it was for the good.

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Ali Raza

Ali is a freelance journalist, having 5 years of experience in web journalism and marketing. He contributes to various online publications. With a master degree, now he combines his passions for writing about internet security and technology. When he is not working, he loves traveling and playing games.

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