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Report: NSA site down in suspected cyberattack

Josh Peterson Tech Editor
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On the eve of a major anti-surveillance protest against the National Security Agency in Washington, D.C., hacktivists are claiming to have engaged in their own digital protest against the agency.

The NSA’s website, NSA.gov, was the target of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Friday that took the site offline for several hours, RT reports.

A DDoS attack overwhelms a website’s servers with Internet traffic in an attempt to crash the site.

The website was still down as of 7pm ET, according to isitup.org. The Daily Caller was unable to connect to the site at this time.

Activists from the Stop Watching Us Coalition are expected to protest against the NSA’s surveillance and deliver a petition of over half-a-million signatures.

Outrage against the NSA was fueled over the summer following revelations about the agency’s global surveillance programs from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Wisconsin Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner and Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy are expected to introduce a bill next week to end the agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ data, the Daily Caller previously reported.

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Tags : hacktivism
Josh Peterson