Donald Trump Campaign Website Down For An Hour, Hackers Claim Responsibility

After the campaign website for Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump went down Saturday morning, an online hacker collective – which has said it focuses on targeting online activity of the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS – claimed responsibility, CBS News reported. The announcement came hours after the same group, New World Hacking, claimed responsibility for an attack on the website for the British broadcaster BBC, the websites of which were down for several hours New Year’s Eve.

New World Hacking said on its Twitter page the attack was a one-hour test as the Trump website was up and running as of Saturday afternoon. In shutting down the BBC’s website, New World Hacking also claimed the denial of service attack as a test of the group’s capabilities.

After purportedly taking down the BBC’s website, the group said it was based in the U.S., and that it targeted the British news service to test its power.

The hacker attack against Trump came as a monitoring group said the real estate mogul's statements on the campaign trail calling for a ban on Muslims entering the United States have been found in a jihadist recruitment video, Agence France-Presse reported.

The clip used by the al Qaeda affiliate al-Shabab showed Trump’s comments after the San Bernardino, California, terror attacks, in which 14 people were killed by a couple said to have been radicalized. The clip of Trump saying there should be a “complete shutdown” of Muslims coming across U.S. borders is followed by a clip of the radical Anwar al-Awlaki, killed in 2011, saying American Muslims should leave the “oppressive Western hemisphere,” AFP reported.

The United States is portrayed as hostile to Muslims in the video. The narrator of the video goes on to say that in the U.S., justice and rule of law don’t apply to Muslims.

Trump has been known to be one of the most outspoken candidates in the presidential race, and has consistently used his history as a tough, successful businessman to win the hearts of prospective American voters.