Hackers Claim Attack on U.K. Home Office Website

Britain's Home Office confirmed Sunday that its website was attacked after hackers claimed responsibility for shutting it down.

The hackers also claim they attacked the Justice Ministry website and warned of further attacks every Saturday on U.K. government websites.

The alleged hackers — who claim ties to Anonymous, the hacker collective — said on Twitter they launched Saturday's denial-of-service attacks and brought down the websites to protest "proposed draconian surveillance measures," Britain's extradition policies and "derogation of civil liberties."

Denial-of-service attacks — which flood websites with too much traffic — are relatively easy to pull off and generally do no lasting damage.

Britain's Home Office said Sunday that its website "was the subject of an online protest" Saturday night, but noted that no sensitive information was held on it.

"There is no indication that the site was hacked and other Home Office systems were not affected," the Home Office said in a statement. "Measures put in place to protect the website meant that members of the public were unable to access the site intermittently."

It added that it will be monitoring the situation closely.

The Home Office and Justice Ministry websites were both operating normally Sunday morning.