Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has had his official election website targeted in a comprehensive DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack.
A group that is now infamous for the takedown for BBC’s website on New Year’s eve has also disrupted Republican frontrunner and presidential candidate Donald Trump’s official campaign website.
The website was knocked offline during the early hours of January 2, 2016 and was eventually operational again around noon, Eastern Time.
As reported by CBS News, Donald Trump’s website was taken down by the hacking group who dubbed themselves “New World Hacking.”
A tweet posted by the account purporting to be the group’s social media account posted:
https://t.co/5PhgHchru8 is #TangoDown by #NwHackers pic.twitter.com/S5LBI44y1W
While the website was knocked offline, the ensuing content was a cached snapshot of an archived version of the website. However, an error message did show up on the mobile version of the website and it read:
We’re experiencing an unusually high volume of traffic at the moment. We’re Honored That so Many People Want to Show Their Support to Help #MakeAmericaGreatAgain!
The group spoke to Hackread and noted in the interview that their ‘hactivist’ measures were a means to take a stand against ISIS, racism and terrorism. A member of the group reportedly said:
“We targeted the Trump site because this guy can get quite racist. It doesn’t matter to us how crazy he gets. Our member DOC actually attacked DONALDJTRUMP.com with a layer 7 attack and he plans to attack Trump’s site later on again.
Donald Trump has previously been targeted by the most notorious hacktivist group of them all – Anonymous. Earlier this year, Donald Trump’s website Trump.com was taken over by hackers who then posted a message in praise of talk-show host Jon Stewart. When Donald Trump was firmly established as a presidential candidate, Anonymous took note of his speech about Muslims to attack his website again.
Lifars previous reported on the incident wherein Anonyous claimed the takedown of Donald Trump’s Trump Towers NY site as “a statement against racism and hatred.
Image credit: Flickr.
