WikiLeaks Hacked By Saudi-Based OurMine

Wikileaks has apparently suffered a cyber attack after Saudi Arabian-based hacking group OurMine briefly took over its web address.

The hack took place on Thursday morning and saw visitors to WikiLeaks.org web page redirected to a webpage created by OurMine, which claimed it was responding to a challenge.

DNS Poisoning

The cyber attack against Wikileaks took place on Thursday morning, but by the afternoon the Wikileaks website appeared to be operating as usual.

“Hi, it’s OurMine (Security Group), don’t worry we are just testing your…. blablablab, oh wait, this is not a security test! Wikileaks, remember when you challenged us to hack you?” read the message.

“Anonymous, remember when you tried to dox us with fake information for attacking wikileaks [sic]?There we go! One group beat you all! #WikileaksHack lets get it trending on twitter [sic]!”

OurMine has clashed with the hacker collective Anonymous, after it posted personal information of individuals they claimed to be members of OurMine. However the Saudi-based hackers argued the so called “doxing” was incorrect.

Anonymous had gone after OurMine for previous DDoS attacks against Wikileaks.And this week it seems that rather than breaching Wikileaks actual servers, OurMine only managed to carry out a “DNS poisoning” attack.

This saw the hackers convincing one or more DNS servers servicing Wikileaks.org to alter their records. For a brief period on Thursday morning, those DNS servers told people’s web browsers that wikileaks.org was actually located on a server controlled by OurMine.

Past Attacks

OurMine has been around for a while now and tends to use its hacks to advertise its own security consulting services.

It took advantage of the LinkedIn password breach revealed in 2016, and used the data there attack some the biggest names in the technology industry. This included Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who saw several of his social media accounts hacked by OurMine.

But the group also also hit Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s Twitter account, as well as publications BuzzFeed and Forbes.

OurMine has also previously hacked Sony Music Global’s Twitter account.

Quiz: Do you know all about security in 2016?