Cyber criminals are believed to have taken down the London Stock Exchange (LSE) website for more than two hours as part of a campaign against the world’s banks and financial institutions.

The attack was carried out by a group based in the Philippines which is part of the ‘hacktivist’ network Anonymous – an organisation infamous for hacking government, religious and corporate websites.

Anonymous claims the incident was one of 67 successful attacks it has launched in the past month on the websites of major institutions, with targets including the Swiss National Bank, the Central Bank of Venezuela and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

A loosely associated international network of activists and hackers, Anonymous first came to public attention in January 2008. It uses the meme of V, an anarchist freedom fighter (pictured)

The attack on the LSE took place at 9am on Thursday, but experts say trading was unlikely to have been affected and that no sensitive data was stolen.

In the 24 hours before the LSE site went down, Anonymous said it had also attacked the websites of the Turkey Stock Exchange and NYSE Euronext, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange.

A loosely associated international network of activists and hackers, Anonymous first came to public attention in January 2008 following a series of high-profile cyber attacks on groups such as the Church of Scientology.

Elad Ben-Meir, from cyber-security company CyberInt, said that one of the group’s goals is to bring down capitalism as part of their ‘opposition to injustice’ and ‘establishment hypocrisy’.

He said: ‘It’s highly unlikely they will succeed in bringing down capitalism, but this latest round of attacks on central banks and stock exchanges around the world highlights the vulnerability of financial institutions at this time.’