Japan's Justice Ministry is investigating possible links between temporary outages of its websites and an international hacker group called "Anonymous."
The ministry says access to its website was blocked for several hours on Tuesday morning. It also says sites belonging to the Public Prosecutors Office, the Immigration Services Agency, and others could not be accessed for several hours either. All the affected organizations are affiliated with the ministry.
The ministry announced on its Twitter account that it is investigating the reasons for the disruptions.
Earlier, one hacker group that calls itself "Anonymous" noted on social media that it had carried out a cyberattack against the Japanese Justice Ministry. It claimed the attack was in protest of the country's refugee policy.
The ministry says that it is aware of the group's claim. It adds that it is looking into the matter.