According to Sophos' senior technology consultant Graham Cluley, the LulzSec hacktivist group is claiming responsibility and - in an echo of the effective downing of the CIA website for two hours last week - the group's Twitter feed said: `Tango down - soca.gov.uk - in the name of #AntiSec'
Infosecurity notes that the SOCA website, whilst hosted externally on the Clara.net hosting platform, has gateway links to other systems and that during the DDoS attacks yesterday, some of these systems were probably inaccessible.
Cluley likens a DDoS attack to "15 fat men trying to get through a revolving door at the same time."
A website, he explained, becomes so flooded with unwanted traffic that genuine visitors to the site find it difficult, or impossible, to get through.
The downing of the SOCA website will have done LulzSec no favours and, as Cluley observes: "LulzSec's anarchic activities are a thorn in the side of the computer crime authorities, and the irony of SOCA - whose staff investigate cybercrimes in the UK - being knocked out by an attack from the hacking gang will not be lost on anyone."
"The question that everyone wants answered, of course, is `Who are the people behind LulzSec, and when will they be brought to justice?'"