Same group that took down the BBC is behind the attack

Jan 4, 2016 09:21 GMT  ·  By

The same hacking group that attacked BBC's website on New Year's Eve is now focusing its DDoS cannon on Donald Trump's campaign website and other adjacent services.

The group, known online as New World Hacking, revealed themselves after the BBC DDoS attacks, during which they tested their new DDoSing tool called BangStresser, which they later started peddling online.

Apparently, the group was very satisfied with their tests, because on Saturday, January 2, the group decided to resume their hacktivism campaigns and aimed BangStresser at Donald Trump's official campaign website, donaldjtrump.com.

The website went down immediately and remained down for several hours before site admins implemented better DDoS mitigation measures.

During the next day, DDoS attacks continued, but on mail.trump.com domain, the Trump Organization's Webmail service.

No official statement was released about the incident from Trump's camp, outside the short messages from the site's operators via Twitter, calling the whole incident just some "unusually high volume of traffic."

The group targeted Trump because of his racist speech

New World Hacking justified their attacks in an interview for Real Forums, saying they targeted Trump due to his racist attitude. The hackers also seem to regret the damage done to the BBC, incident that they've called only a test. The same sentiment was not shared for Trump's case.

Additionally, one of the group's twelve members seemed to have launched a short DDoS against the Black Lives Matter website, but the group apologized shortly after, calling the whole incident a misunderstanding.

In the past, New World Hacking has been very active in Anonymous campaigns, especially in operations against Ku Klux Klan websites, and ISIS' online presence.

The group has also announced they plan to participate in Anonymous' upcoming #OpSerenaShim campaign against Turkey, campaign that hacktivists want to carry out as a protest against the mysterious death of American TV reporter Serena Shim, reporting on Turkey's attacks on its Kurdish population.