AlQa'dah 18, 1433, Oct 4, 2012, SPA -- Websites operated by Sweden's central bank, the parliament and government were operating again Thursday, after an overnight hacker attack forced them offline, dpa reported. Hackers believed to be linked to the group Anonymous had earlier urged supporters to conduct the so-called denial of service (DDoS) attack after an internet company was searched by Swedish police. "The raid on PRQ disabled many of our torrent sites. We see this as a crime against freedom-to-information and therefore we have disabled some of the governments' or affiliate sites in protesting against this raid," a masked spokesperson said in a video posted on the video-sharing site YouTube. The Swedish Prosecution Authority said it had ordered the search of the internet company, which it named as PeriQ Networks AB, over suspected copyright infringements. Several servers were seized although no person at the internet company was suspected of a crime, the authority said, adding the search had ended on Wednesday. A denial of service attack involves web addresses being hit by a flood of traffic, making the website unaccessible. In the video, Anonymous said it planned a new attack for Friday. The central bank's external website was offline but financial transactions were not affected, the Riksbank said. The government's website was also temporarily down late Wednesday and it posted an online message saying access was limited. Other official Swedish sites such as the National Board of Health and Welfare, as well as that operated by the news agency TT, went temporarily offline earlier this week due to similar attacks.
