Anonymous hackers take down CIA website

Washington: Hacker group Anonymous Friday night took down the website of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Though the CIA website was back in a few hours, but it seemed to be struggling to be fully on its feet at the time of filing this report.

"CIA TANGO DOWN: https://www.cia.gov/ #Anonymous," the hacker group wrote on Twitter. But in a later tweet, @YourAnonNews, the Twitter account believed to be associated with the hacker group, said, "We'd remind media that if we report a hack or ddos (distributed denial of service) attack, it doesn't necessarily mean we did it...FYI."

Anonymous did not make public any details about the hacking, but the group's hackers normally use distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks to knock their targets offline.

"We are aware of the problems accessing our website, and are working to resolve them," CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood told CNN.

Also targeted were the websites of Mexico's mining ministry and the US state of Alabama.

Last month, Anonymous briefly took down the websites of the department of justice and the FBI in retaliation against the shutting down of the Megaupload file sharing website.

Anonymous also published a recording last month of a confidential call between FBI agents and London detectives in which the law-enforcement agents discuss action they are taking against hacking.