WikiLeaks Hit By More Attacks

WikiLeaks was hit by another blow from a denial-of-service attack on Tuesday.

Though the attack initially focused on cablegate.wikileaks.org – the site WikiLeaks is using to host its cache of diplomatic cables – the attackers eventually moved on to wikileaks.org. Earlier today, WikiLeaks posted a message on its Twitter feed that the attack had exceeded 10 Gigabits per second.

Symbolic attacks

“The attacks are likely to be symbolic more than anything else, as several large media groups have already been supplied with the full set of leaked messages,” blogged Paul Mutton of Netcraft.

A similar situation arose on 28 November, just hours before WikiLeaks began posting more than 250,000 US embassy diplomatic cables online. In that case, a Twitter user going by the name th3j35t3r (“Jester”) claimed responsibility for the attack in a tweet, and listed a number of other sites along with the message “TANGO DOWN” to indicate they had been taken down as well.

As of publishing, both the wikileaks.org and cablegate.wikileaks.org sites were back online.

Among the cables is a document accusing the Chinese government of directing the Aurora attack that impacted Google, Adobe Systems, Juniper Networks and numerous of other companies. China has denied any involvement in the attack in the past, and has reportedly blocked access to the WikiLeaks site from China since Monday. Another cable discussed the possible implications of a future collapse of North Korea.

“China takes note of the government reports,” Hong Lei, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, was quoted as saying at a Beijing news conference on Tuesday. “We hope the US side will handle the relevant issues. As for the content of the documents, we will not comment on that.”