Supporters of the loose-knit hacker collective Anonymous temporarily forced the main website for Interpol offline this evening, after the international police group announced it had arrested 25 suspected supporters.

The site www.interpol.int was unreachable for 20-30 minutes and appears to be loading again, albeit slowly.

This could have been the result of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack by supporters of Anonymous. For this, either a hacker uses a botnet, or hundreds of volunteers use a special web tool flood a site with enough junk traffic to take it offline. (In such a short space of time a botnet looks more likely.)

Moments ago a senior Twitter account for Anonymous, AnonymousIRC, tweeted: “interpol.int seems to be #TangoDown. We can’t say that this surprises us much.”

Another prominent Twitter account holder with Anonymous added, “Looks like interpol.int is having some traffic issues. Now who would have expected that?”

The attack comes after as police conducted raids in dozens of cities across Europe and Latin America as part of “Operation Unmask,” which started in mid-February.

Interpol said the operation responded to cyber-attacks in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain, that hit the Colombian Ministry of Defence the presidency, Chile’s Endesa electricity company and its National Library, among others.

According to Interpol’s announcement, police from Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain seized 250 items of computer equipment and mobile phones, credit cards and cash at 40 premises in 15 cities. The suspects ranged in age from 17 to 40.

In a separate incident, police in Spain arrested four other suspected supporters of Anonymous, accused of taking websites offline and leaking sensitive data.

(Source: Forbes)