WikiLeaks Hit by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack

WikiLeaks faced another distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Tuesday morning, as reported by Fast Company. This attack was more intense than the one on Sunday, but it still didn’t come close to shutting down the site.

A computer hacker known as “The Jester” shocked officials by claiming responsibility for the cyber attack that disabled the WikiLeaks website on Sunday morning. This incident occurred just before WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. embassy cables to the public.

The Jester, an ex-soldier, justified his hacking by accusing the website of “attempting to endanger the lives of our troops, ‘other assets,’ and foreign relations.” The self-proclaimed “hacktivist for good” turned to the web to combat terrorism and organizations that seem to support Islamic extremism after his military service.

Cybersecurity expert Mikko Hypponen of F-Secure told CNN he believed The Jester was indeed behind the attack.

WikiLeaks had already distributed the information to numerous sources, stating in a Twitter feed, “El Pais, Le Monde, Spiegel, Guardian, and NYT will publish many US embassy cables tonight, even if WikiLeaks goes down.”

Although the WikiLeaks site was down for several hours on Sunday, it was up and running by Monday morning. Despite The Jester’s attempt to hinder WikiLeaks from distributing these classified documents, the site made its latest and largest leak shortly after the attack.

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