Lizard Squad takes down National Crime Agency website following Operation Vivarium

Notorious hacking collective Lizard Squad has claimed that the take down of the National Crime Agency (NCA) website was carried out by its members. The attack comes four days after the NCA arrested six people associated with the group as part of Operation Vivarium

The hacking group tweeted "Stressed out?" on Tuesday morning (1 September), together with a link to the NCA website. The tweet was accompanied by a picture of the group's Twitter picture of a Lizard in a top hat with a pipe in its mouth.

Lizard Squad has previously gained attention for attacks on various companies, organisations and networks. Victims have included Malaysia Airlines and the Playstation and Xbox gaming networks.

The powerful tool used to carry out the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks is sold by the group to customers wishing to take down servers and websites. The so-called Lizard Stresser tool was allegedly used by six UK teenagers to attack the websites of a national newspaper, a school, gaming companies and several online retailers.

According to the NCA, the teenagers bought Lizard Stresser for a "small fee" using bitcoin to remain anonymous. "By paying a comparatively small fee, tools like Lizard Stresser can cripple businesses financially and deprive people of access to important information and public services," Tony Adams, from the NCA's National Cyber Crime Unit, said at the time.

"One of our key priorities is to engage with those on the fringes of cyber criminality, to help them understand the consequences of cyber crime and how they can channel their abilities into productive and lucrative legitimate careers."

The NCA is yet to make an official comment on the latest attack and at the time of publication had not responded to a request for comment from IBTimes UK.