An individual claiming to be responsible for an attack on Anonymous has contacted the IBTimes UK clarifying Team Matrix's claim is false and that the attack was an act of 'lulz', not war.

The alleged owner of the exotz@hushmail.com account responsible for the Tuesday AnonyOps website defacement contacted the International Business Times UK on Thursday via email.

Claiming to be Exotz, in the correspondence the hacker moved to quell speculation about their identity. Specifically, Exotz reported that he was not a member of Anonymous and that Team Matrix's claims of responsibility were false.

"I am mad about how 'TeamMatricHacking' [sic] claimed that they defaced the anonyops. They DID NOT. Exotz and 'ONE MAN ARMY' has been written there for reason," read the email. "I've never been associated with anonymous in any way. So I am not 'anon that went rogue' as someone said at youtube."

Moving on, the individual claiming to be Exotz clarified that the attack was mounted for "lulz" - a slang term for laughs - and was not intended as an act of war. "And also: this is not a 'war', this was done just for 'lulz' but actually nothing that would hurt them in any way was done. The attack was NOT meant to hurt them in any way and I don't think it did," said Exotz.

The attack on AnonyOps - one of the more prominent sites associated with the Anonymous collective - occurred on Tuesday, with a post appearing on the site's front page reading, "Such an unfortunate accident, hackers have been hacked! Greetings from Exotz exotz@hushmail.com."

Later, on Thursday a video statement from a group calling itself Team Matrix appeared on YouTube claiming responsibility for the attack. The statement went on to state that the defacement was a declaration of war against Anonymous.

"We have already defaced one of your affiliated sites anonyops.com, we will continue our attacks until we are satisfied. we will continue to target the anonymous community on face book and every website linked to anonymous. we will take down any websites you use to assist you in operations, then finally we will start revealing identities to the public." read Team Matrix's statement.