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The Lizard Squad 'hackers' have been causing a lot of cyber mischief lately, but they've just got a taste of their own medicine.

Their website has been taken offline and their Twitter account - @lizardmafia - has been suspended, with a branch of 'hacktivist' group Anonymous taking the credit.

The news was announced by Anonymous Protection with a tweet saying: “LizardSquad website has been cleaned out and is offline: lizardpatrol.com. LizardSquad Twitter is now suspended: @lizardmafia. We WIN.”

The Anonymous Protection group says it’s "dedicated to protect the people of the internet" and chose to take on Lizard Squad after the group made threats against Anonymous and carried out a number of denial of service cyberattacks (DDoS).

The cyberattacks took down a number of key websites, including Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network on Christmas day.

The Lizards have since been using Twitter to advertise their "cyberattack-for-hire" service, Lizard Stresser.

Most recently Lizard Squad hacked Taylor Swift's Twitter account and threatened to release nude pictures.

Anonymous Protection seems to have delivered on its promise, taking down Lizard Squad’s website using a similar denial-of-service attack, and hammering Twitter with complaints so that social network took down the @lizardmafia account.

(Image: Twitter/@Lizardmafia)

Twitter doesn't comment on individual cases, but will take down accounts if they post other people’s private information without their permission or make threats. Twitter can also suspend accounts if they use the service “in furtherance of illegal activities”.