Twitter accounts with monikers relating to the hacktivist collective Anonymous on Tuesday evening began taking credit for knocking offline the website of Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization, which hours earlier announced it had arrested 29 suspects connected with the hacking of government websites in Colombia and Chile.
As of 6 pm ET, the website of Interpol was loading with intermittent access.
“#LibertadAnon TARGET: www,http://interpol.int …. FIRE! THIS IS A WORLDWIDE CALL! #Anonymous,” tweeted an account called Anonymous Hispano at 5 pm ET, linking to a website offering users the opportunity to join a botnet — a networked series of computers — and participate in a distributed denial of service attack, overwhelming Interpol’s website with traffic.
“http://interpol.int TANGO DOWN II 404 Interpol, #Anonymous is not a criminal organization,” tweeted another account, AnonOps, at 5:48 pm ET.
