Self-proclaimed ‘hactivists’, individuals and groups who deploy hacking tactics for political ends, have targeted the United Nations official website, forcing some sections of the website to be taken offline, reports the BBC.

In an act of “cyber-protest”, hackers have defaced pages of the website reserved for statements from the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, posting slogans accusing the US and Israel of atrocities against children. The group, which in other attacks has claimed to be from Turkey, also breached other pages of the UN official website.

The hackers have assumed the names "kerem125", "Gsy" and "M0sted", says the BBC.

The United Nations was forced to take the affected pages offline in order to repair them and has managed to restore the Secretary General’s comment page.

Cyber-protests of this nature are growing in frequency, and many major corporations and international conglomerates – including retailers, fast food chains, and multi-media corporations – are regular targets of so-called hacktivist attacks, which aim to degrade the organisation’s online services and damage its brand.

In April, Information Age reported on the growing use of online means to perpetrate politicised cyber assaults against the global business community, the threat of which was starkly underlined in early May, when Baltic state Estonia fell victim to a globally co-ordinated, politicised assault against its government and private IT networks.

Information Age analysis: Cyber assault