WikiLeaks Attack

Wikileaks, a non-profit media organization, and several WikiLeaks mirror sites, have undergone a 10-day online attack from an entity known as “Anti Leaks”. At this point, it is unknown if this entity is a group or an individual, according to www.msnbc.com.

The attack came in the form of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), leaving the website basically inoperable, according to www.cnet.com. A DDoS is an attack in which “a multitude of compromised servers attack a single target, thereby causing a denial of service for users of the targeted system. The flood of incoming messages to the target system essentially forces it to shut down, thereby denying service to the system to legitimate users,” according to www.techtarget.com.

The multitude of incoming messages from the DDoS was so large that typical filtering software was insufficient to stop them.

“Whoever is running it controls thousands of machines or is able to simulate them,” WikiLeaks posted in a Tweet on Friday.

According to an online post from Anti Leaks, the entity is not supported by the U.S. government.
“We find the speculation that we are not behind these attacks and/or that we are CIA/NSA/FBI or even Wikileaks themselves to be downright comical.”

Thanks to the private company CloudFare, a web performance and security company, WikiLeaks is back up as of Monday evening.
“CloudFare took up their case over the weekend and as of two minutes ago had them back online,” said a company statement on Monday.

WikiLeaks has faced several online attacks over recent years, and in 2010 had to restructure their website to enhance electronic defenses, according to www.cnet.com.