Anonymous Says It Shut Down Twitter

Anonymous took credit for making Twitter inoperable early Monday for some 30 minutes, only weeks after the same hacking group claimed responsibility for a massive disruption that disabled numerous sites across the Web, the Washington Examiner reported.

New World Hackers, the Anonymous sect that claimed responsibility for an attack on Internet firm Dyn in October, also said it caused this latest incident by using a distributed denial-of-service attack, which overloads sites so that they are unable to function. The group said in a message to the Washington Examiner that the "Twitter outage was us."

Just days after the attack on Dyn, Anonymous had issued threats that a distributed denial of service attack would be coming, although it was not specific about when it would be or which websites and organizations it would target, the Mirror reported.

New World Hackers, which says it is based in Russia and considers itself at odds with both the United States and Russian governments, said it launched Monday's attack after a separate DDoS temporarily disabled WikiLeaks.

"Our motive is just to warn as of today to stop messing with WikiLeaks just because they leak something that should be exposed," New World Hackers said.

Following the Dyn attack last month, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security said they were investigating all potential causes, the Washington Examiner reported. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said non-state actors were likely behind that attack.

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