Soca website possible first victim of LulzSec/Anonymous AntiSec hacking campaign

LulzSec has started a new hacking campaign, apparently in cooperation with Anonymous, which seeks to target governments and banking institutions for attack.

In a statement LulzSec said the two groups would be working on Operation Anti-Security, which seeks to extract classified government information, and well as email and other data from "banks and other high-ranking establishments."

"We encourage any vessel, large or small, to open fire on any government or agency that crosses their path," it said.

"We fully endorse the flaunting of the word ‘AntiSec' on any government website defacement or physical graffiti art. We encourage you to spread the word of AntiSec far and wide, for it will be remembered. To increase efforts, we are now teaming up with the Anonymous collective and all affiliated battleships."

It seems the first target for the AntiSec attacks is the UK's own Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), which is suffering sporadic outage after what appears to be a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. LulzSec has claimed responsibility in a tweet.

"Soca has chosen to take its website offline to limit the impact of DDOS attack on other clients hosted by our service provider," a Soca spokesperson told the BBC.

"The Soca website is a source of information for the general public which is hosted by an external provider. It is not linked to our operational material or the data we hold."

Taking down a website is not hard in itself, it just requires the right software and enough participants, willing or via botnet. But LulzSec have claimed that the attack masks a more intrusive hacking effort.

"DDoS is of course our least powerful and most abundant ammunition. Government hacking is taking place right now behind the scenes," it tweeted.

However, it now seems that another hacking group has taken exception to the activity of LulzSec, and is threatening to expose them. Calling themselves Web Ninjas, the team claim to have cracked LulzSec's communications system.

"As all of you know that LulzSec likes providing LULZ at the expense of others by hacking them and exposing their information and then other stupid people follow it by logging to victims personal accounts, their FB, PP, Email by creating more confusion," it said.

"Web ninjas decided to give them a taste of their own LULZ and we have shown them that they are not the internet Gods they think they are. Web Ninjas does and will stop LulzSec."

In this blog's opinion we're going to see a lot of claims and counter-claims bandied about, with some big-name organisations stuck in the middle being attacked to prove a point. Expect a busy week ahead.