June 15, 2011 9:28 PM EDT
The latest victim of the now infamous hacking group LulzSec is none other than the US's own Central Intelligence Agency, adding to the recent string of high profile hacking cases worldwide.
On Wednesday the public website of the CIA went down, with the hacker group Lulz Security saying it had launched the attack.
The group has recently launched other high profile attacks on multinational corporation Sony and News Corp, and even Senate websites, among others.
"We are looking into these reports," a CIA spokeswoman said.
Lulz only made claims that it attacked www.cia.gov, and there was no evidence on Wednesday evening that sensitive data in the agency's internal computer network had been compromised.
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The group, which comprises of people across the globe, announced the attack shortly before 6 p.m. East Coast time.
"Tango down," the group Tweeted, pointing to the CIA website.
Although the group fashions itself more as pranksters and activists than people with sinister intent, its members have been accused of breaking the law and are wanted by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.
Lulz broke into a Senate website over the weekend and released data stolen from the legislative body's computer servers.
In May, the group posted a fake story on the PBS website saying that rapper Tupac Shakur was still alive and living in New Zealand.
The attack also marks an uptick in cyber-attacks this year. The last high-profile victim was the International Monetary Fund this weekend, who's computer network was breached by what was believed to be a government backed effort.
Just last week banking giant Citibank confirmed that credit card data of about 200,000 of its North American customers have been hacked. The event marked the largest attack on a bank in the US to date.
The week before US military contractor Lockheed Martin was compromised as hackers used Lockheed's own "secure id" technology to access its networks.
Google has accused Chinese hackers of targeting the Gmail accounts of U.S. government officials.
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