WikiLeaks moves domain name as hackers wage war
WikiLeaks’ US domain name system provider, EveryDNS, withdrew service to the wikileaks.org name late on Thursday, saying it took the action because the new hacker attacks threatened the rest of its network.
“Wikileaks.org has become the target of multiple distributed denial of service attacks. These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure,” EveryDNS, headquartered in Manchester, New Hampshire, said.
EveryDNS.net provides access to some 500,000 websites.
In a tweet yesterday, the owner of EveryDNS, Dynamic Network Services Inc., wrote that “trust is paramount: Our users and customers are our most important asset.” It did not specify whether it was referring to WikiLeaks, however.
WikiLeaks confirmed the move in a separate tweet, saying “WikiLeaks.org domain killed by US everydns.net after claimed mass attacks.”
It was not clear where the alleged attacks were coming from.
WikiLeaks’ new domain, wikileaks.ch, is owned by the Swiss Pirate Party, a political group formed two years ago to campaign for freedom of information and sensible technology policy.
Pascal Gloor, the party’s vice president, said they registered the domain about six months ago.
“We wanted to show our support for Wikileaks,” he told the Associated Press by telephone, adding the party is only offering the domain name right now and that it hasn’t provided the site with any servers or infrastructure.
WikiLeaks has previously claimed that intelligence agencies from the US and elsewhere have been targeting its site, which has spilled thousands of embarrassing US diplomatic cables as well as classified US military documents.
WikiLeaks has so far released some 667 cables — out of the 250,000 it says it has on file.
Earlier this week, WikiLeaks’ Swedish server host, Bahnhof, confirmed that the website had been hit by a cyber attack just before it leaked thousands of classified documents.
In addition to the latest batch of sensitive material, WikiLeaks has angered the US and other governments by publishing almost half a million secret documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It is not clear how WikiLeaks obtained the diplomatic documents, but the US government’s prime suspect is an Army private, Bradley Manning, who is in custody on charges of leaking other classified documents to WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks has reported a string of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks since dumping the US documents.
Classic DDoS attacks occur when legions of “zombie” computers, normally machines infected with viruses, are commanded to simultaneously visit a website, overwhelming servers or knocking them offline completely.
The latest technological setback for the whistleblower site came after Amazon booted it from its computer servers on Wednesday following pressure from US politicians, prompting the site to move to a French server.
“Free speech the land of the free — fine our dollars are now spent to employ people in Europe,” WikiLeaks said.
“If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the First Amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books.”
With the elusive whistleblower laid low, a group of US senators introduced legislation that would make it illegal to publish the names of informants serving the US military and intelligence community.
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