Cyber attackers manage to disrupt the website of the National Crime Agency. Industry observers relate this event to a number of arrests made last week. Apparently, the hacking group was trying to revenge. Indeed, the NCA website was temporarily down mere days after six British teenagers were released on bail on suspicion of using Lizard Squad’s cyberattack instruments to target various sites and online services.

The six UK teenagers remain accused of using a so-called Lizard Stresser, a tool able to bombard websites and services with bogus traffic (better known as DDoS attack). The suspects paid for using the tool to attack a national newspaper, a school, gaming companies and some online retailers.

The National Crime Agency is the latest entity to fall foul of the same Distributed Denial of Service attack. The latter stops real visitors from reaching the website. The NCA appeared to take the embarrassment in its stride, saying attacks on its website were “a fact of life”, since the website of the law enforcement agency has always been an attractive target. The agency also explained that distributed denial of service is a blunt form of attack that only takes volume, not skill. Moreover, DDoS is not a security breach, and therefore the attack didn’t affect the body’s operational capability.

The worst DDoS attack could do was cause a temporary inconvenience to users of the NCA website. The entity pointed out that it had a duty to balance the value of keeping the site accessible with its cost, especially in the face of such attacks. The measures the NCA has in place ensure that its website is generally up and running again in less than an hour, though in some cases it can take longer.

A few days ago, Twitter account Lizard Squad posted a message saying “Stressed out? http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/ #offline”. The question was an allusion to the name of the code used to launch the high-profile hacker attacks.

It should be mentioned that the recent arrests occurred as part of an operation dubbed Vivarium, coordinated by the National Crime Agency. Six teenagers were arrested across the United Kingdom, all of them have been bailed and none was accused of being a Lizard Squad member. In addition, a further two 18-year-olds were interviewed under caution.