Since early Friday afternoon NSA.gov has been unavailable; Twitter erupted in praise from people claiming to be part of the hacktivist collective Anonymous, some even alluding to the group being responsible for the alleged attack.

RT points out that the allegations that Anonymous participated in the DDoS — are currently unverified, and @AnonymousOwn3r has previously taken credit for downing websites in a similar fashion, although those claims have been largely contested.



The crippling of NSA.gov comes amid a series of damning national security documents that have been disclosed without authorization by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.



The revelations in the leaked documents have impassioned people around the globe outraged by evidence of widespread surveillance operated by the NSA, and a massive “Stop Watching Us” rally is scheduled for Saturday in Washington, DC.

** NBC received the following explanation from an NSA spokesperson - “NSA.gov was not accessible for several hours Friday because of an internal error that occurred during a scheduled update,” the spy agency said in an emailed statement. “The issue will be resolved this evening. Claims that the outage was caused by a distributed denial of service [DDoS] attack are not true.”

Earlier yesterday evening online server trackers noted the NSA’s website had been down for at least six hours, and the site continues to be inaccessible for some users. Earlier an NSA spokesperson told ABC News the agency’s internal, sensitive network was “not at all” compromised. No classified information is in danger, the spokesperson said.



As of this update the site was still unavailable.