Hackers bring down Sweden's official websites

Several Swedish official websites were knocked offline on Monday, although no one has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

"I can confirm that the government site had problems today, but for security reasons, I cannot say more," Anna Dahlen, a government spokeswoman, told AFP adding that she did not know when the site would be back online.

Among websites hit were sweden.se -- which gives general information about the country, studyinsweden.se and the armed forces' portal. Patrik Braennstroem, webhost of sweden.se, said it "came under a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack." He believes that other official sites were "undoubtedly" victims of the same attack.