Anonymous threatening CIA, Mexico, and Alabama

A message Friday on a Twitter page and Tumblr feed affiliated with the hacking group known as Anonymous claimed credit for taking down the Central Intelligence Agency’s website.

The posting read: “CIA TANGO DOWN: https://www.cia.gov/ #Anonymous.”

Numerous outside reports indicated the CIA’s website was down, and CNN’s attempts from late Friday afternoon into the evening to get into the site failed.

Asked about the outage on the agency’s public website, CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood said, “We are looking into these reports.”

Who is Anonymous? Everyone and no one

Additionally, information was “compromised” in a hacking of Alabama state websites, the Alabama Department of Homeland Security said in a news release.

“We are aware of the current situation regarding individual(s) claiming responsibility for hacking into a state of Alabama … public website,” Alabama Department of Homeland Security Director Spencer Collier said in the release.

Jack Doane, director of Alabama’s Information Services Division, told CNN later by e-mail that state technology experts “are conducting a forensic analysis to determine what if any information has been compromised.”

It was not immediately clear what websites were hacked or who was responsible. A web page that included Anonymous’ signature tag line stated the hacking was in response to Alabama’s “recent racist legislation in an attempt to punish immigrants as criminals” — referring to legislation, signed last June, aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration in the state.

Anonymous also provided links to documents, messages and other files that it said it had taken off the website of Mexico’s mining ministry.

“Hello Mexican Chamber of Mines,” a related Twitter post read. “Want to see your emails exposed?”

The Mexican mining ministry website appeared to be down early Friday evening.