Electronic activists managed to shut down the World Economic Forum (WEF) website late last week during a 'virtual sit-in'.

Anti-globalisation activists the Electronic Disturbance Theater, RTMark, and Federation of Random Action are claiming responsibility for disrupting the site during a five-day conference for the world's business elite, which began on Thursday.

The Electronic Disturbance Theatre had posted a simple web-based tool on its website, which could be downloaded and used by participants to effectively denial of service (DoS) the Weforum.org website.

Using a simple Javascript refresh command, participants of the 'sit-in' used the tool to request multiple copies of the website every few seconds. The resulting barrage was confirmed to have knocked out the WEF web server.

The Electronic Disturbance Theatre claims that since the protest began, over 43,000 people have downloaded the DoS tool to aid the demonstration.

This is the second time the WEF has been digitally attacked. At last year's event, a group calling themselves 'Virtual Monkeywrench' claimed responsibility for breaking into the WEF network and stealing confidential information on 27,000 delegates.

A 20-year-old Swiss man has since been arrested.

The WEF annual meeting usually takes place in Davos, Switzerland, but this year's event was moved to New York as a gesture of solidarity post-September 11.