A powerful cyber attack earlier today forced all British Broadcasting websites (BBC) to go offline and unavailable for readers for several hours.

The cyber attack started at 0700 GMT forcing visitors to view the offline page of all BBC website with a 500 Internal Error.

It is unclear who was behind this attacks but keeping an eye on the previous cyber attacks on the BBC and French TV 5 Monde, the involvement of Daesh or ISIS terrorist group won’t be surprising.

BBC has acknowledged that their websites were under powerful “distributed denial of service” attack. In a Tweet from BBC Press Office,

We're aware of a technical issue affecting the BBC website and are working to fix this now. We'll update you as soon as we can. — BBC Press Office (@bbcpress) December 31, 2015

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In a statement from the administration, BBC has apologized for any inconvenience.

“We apologise for any inconvenience you may have experienced.”

BBC revealed that the DDoS attack also affected iPlayer Radio app and iPlayer catch-up service. However, at the time of publishing this article, all BBC websites were restored and available for readers.

In the past, Daesh or ISIS terrorist group conducted cyber attacks on French TV 5 Monde and BBC’s live transmission.

BBC News Channel fell prey to a cyber-attack from ISIS when ‘hackers’ were able to interrupt the channel’s live broadcast and upload propaganda material of Islamic State.

The appearance of the words “Je Suis IS” on TV Screens left viewers stunned while they were watching the BBC News Channel on Thursday, April 9th, 2015.

Back in 2012, BBC’s Persian website was also hacked by Iranian hackers. In another cyber attack, Russian hackers took control of BBC’s computer servers and left its data for sale on Christmas.