First roses, roses. Then thorns, thorns - Gurdjieff
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Hackers target Wikileaks web site
WHISTLEBOWING WEB SITE Wikileaks was the victim of a cyberattack on Tuesday after the publication of thousands of US State Department cables and the revelation that it suffered a leak of its own.
The news was announced on Wikileaks' Twitter page, where it said, "WikiLeaks.org is presently under attack." It directed people to a mirror after many people were unable to access the web site, before tweeting, "We are still under a cyber attack."
Wikileaks asked for donations to help fight the hackers, suggesting that a lack of funding was the reason the web site went down. "Want to really help WikiLeaks fend of attacks? Send us money to pay the bills. Many people x $5 = strength."
If it was a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, which is the most commonly used tactic by hackers, Wikileaks could pay for a DDoS defence system, which basically uses the cloud to automatically scale web site bandwidth to deal with a sudden influx in traffic. Wikileaks made no mention of what it would spend the money on, however.
Earlier today Wikileaks managed to get its main web site Wikileaks.org back online, telling the hackers, "Nice try". However, some people are still reporting difficulties, which Wikileaks suggested is a DNS caching issue rather than a renewed wave of attacks. We tested the web site and found it was fully online with no problems at the time of writing.
It's not clear who the attackers are or what their motives are, but the move follows a sudden increase in the volume of leaked cables coming from Wikileaks, a decision it made after a blunder by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange led to the entire collection of unredacted cables ending up online, along with the encryption key, which Assange had earlier given out to trusted individuals.
The Wikileaks web site was previously hacked by an unknown individual or group in its early days, but many hacker groups, like Anonymous and Lulzsec, have voiced support for the whistleblowing effort and have attacked companies like Paypal for withdrawing support for it. It seems that there are some hackers out there, however, who are not on Wikileaks' side. µ
Tags: Security
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"Wikileaks made no mention of what it would spend the money on, however" Duh, Dean Wilson is wondering why Wikileaks isn't outlining its plan of defence.
"It's not clear who the attackers are or what their motives are" Companies like HBGary hired by US government bodies maybe, Dean Wilson?
"[...]have attacked companies like Paypal for withdrawing support for it." That's how US government people would describe it. Most unbiased writers however would say companies like Paypal have been attacked because they were refusing online payments in support of Assange's legal aid. On the other hand Paypal and consorts do continue to accept payments for hate mongorers like Sarah Palin.
"It seems that there are some hackers out there, however, who are not on Wikileaks' side." I'm sure Dean Wilson had 4 orgasms in a row after writing that sentence.
Who gains the most from these attacks? I wouldn't put it past the government to try to bring this site down. I don't think we need to look very far for the culprit here.
I, for one, am glad that the cables finally got out. I mean, I'm happy that wikileaks are getting the information out there, but the whole method of slowly trickling information to the public reeks of PR and egotism.