Lulz Security had knocked the US CIA public-facing website offline

(Antler)The hacker group Lulz Security, or LulzSec, on Wednesday said it had knocked the US CIA public-facing website offline, BBC News reported. The claim came later on the same day that the group had set up a telephone hotline to take requests for hacking targets.

"Tango down - cia.gov - for the lulz," the group said on its Twitter account. Lulz is Internet-speak for laughs, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The CIA site, cia.gov, initially couldn't be accessed from New York to San Francisco, and Bangalore to London, Reuters reported. Later on Wednesday evening, service was sporadic, but there was no evidence that sensitive data in the CIA internal computer network had been compromised.

LulzSec, a hacker group that is believed to be made up of former members of the hacker activist organization Anonymous, claimed earlier this week that it had hacked the US Senate's public website, and posted computer files obtained in the attack on the Internet, according to Bloomberg News. The LulzSec hackers, who Barrett Brown, an informal spokesman for Anonymous, said are based mostly in the US and Europe, have announced their attacks on Twitter and on the group’s website, lulzsecurity.com.

LulzSec portrays itself more as pranksters and activists than as people with sinister intent, but its members have been accused of breaking the law and are wanted by the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies, Reuters said.

The hotline telephone number that the group set up on Wednesday spelled out "LULZSEC" and had an area code in the US state of Ohio, AFP reported. A recorded greeting had a man speaking with an exaggerated French accent explaining that "Pierre Dubois and Francois Deluxe" were unavailable because they were up to mischief on the Internet.