In continuation of its retaliatory action to protest against the shuttering of the Megaupload file-sharing site, “hacktivist” group Anonymous claimed the responsibility for the recent attack on CBS. com. Earlier, the group had, last week, targeted the public websites of the Justice Department, the FBI, and the world's biggest music company Universal Music.

The attack on CBS. com affected all of the website, with the hackers apparently gaining root access to completely wipe the site's files and directories; and not merely forcing it to go offline with the help of a torrent of distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDOS) using its "Low Orbit Ion Cannon" tool.

With the Anonymous hackers noting in their Twitter account @youranonnews that the CBS.com site was offline for nearly 20 minutes, users who tried to get access to the main CBS index page during that time were shown a directory structure which contained only one file – foundry. html.

Meanwhile, ‘404 Not Found’ errors were displayed for users who tried to access any of the sub-sites of CBS. com, including, among others, the bookmarked pages featuring its litany of television shows.

While the CBS. com site was the most recent one to be taken down by the Anonymous hacking group, the hackers had earlier stated in a tweet that their DDoS attacks on Thursday were the biggest attacks that they have managed to launch till now, involving the contribution of as many as 5,600 users.