Home Scandal and Gossip Wikileaks cyber attack: Who did it and why?

Wikileaks cyber attack: Who did it and why?

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Wikileaks cyber attack
Wikileaks cyber attack at its height Friday mid-day.
Wikileaks cyber attack
Wikileaks cyber attack at its height Friday mid-day.

Wikileaks cyber attack: Who is behind it and why? Theories emerge in the wake of today’s bombastic disturbance on the internet, as US authorities decline to publicly name source.

Cyber hackers are learning if one is to get even the best and most potent way to do that is to hit them where it really hurts, the check-book.

Hence began a concerted effort starting circa 6am on the East coast of the US where supporters of Wikileaks are alleged to have unleashed a large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the servers of Dyn, a major DNS host.

The co-ordinated cyber attack is believed to have come as retribution for the recent suspension of Editor in Chief, Julian Assange’s internet access.

Saying as much, Wikileaks, Friday afternoon admonished sympathizers for its part in orchestrating the coordinated attack.

Read a statement courtesy of the covert media group: Mr. Assange is still alive and WikiLeaks is still publishing. We ask supporters to stop taking down the US internet. You proved your point.’

It then tweeted: ‘The Obama administration should not have attempted to misuse its instruments of state to stop criticism of its ruling party candidate.’ 

Claiming responsibility for the cyber attack on behalf of Wikileaks were Hacktivist groups Anonymous and New World.

The cyber attack is thought to come as a result of the Ecuador government muzzling Wikileaks leader over the weekend, with Julian Assange’s internet access cut off after the London based consulate said it didn’t want to be perceived as ‘meddling’ in foreign nations elections.

Since that statement, the internet has been ablaze with speculation that the Ecuador government received pressure from the US government after a string of embarrassing leaks exposing what many argue is crony capitalism and pay for play politics courtesy of Hillary Clinton.

In the days after, WikiLeaks accused John Kerry and the US Government of pressuring Ecuador to shut down Assange’s internet connection, with the South American country in turn denying it came under any pressure from the US or any other government.

Speculation aside, sympathizers colluded (at whose helm has yet to be understood), serving to affect a blitz which (this site included) brought to a standstill many stalwart websites, from reddit, twitter, amazon, cnn, spotify, Wired, HBO, People and the UK’s guardian among many.

Wikileaks cyber attack
Wikileaks cyber attack; companies affected.

Notes gizmodo late Friday afternoon: Update 4:22 PM EST: Looks like this is probably going to get even worse before it gets any better. Dyn says they are being hit with a third wave of attacks. Dyn told CNBC the attack is “well planned and executed, coming from tens of millions IP addresses at same time.”

The collective misery for thousands of internet providers here in the US and the UK came as Internet service company Dyn, which controls the ‘address book’ of the internet for dozens of major companies, said that it had suffered its first denial of service (DDoS) attack shortly after 6AM ET in an attack that mostly affected the east coast of the US. 

At the time the New Hampshire based outlet told CNBC the attack was ‘well planned and executed, coming from tens of millions IP addresses at same time.’

The outlet confirmed a second attack at 1PM ET, which appeared to be centered on UK servers, and later said ‘several’ attacks were underway on servers across the globe, with the west coast being particularly badly hit.

By early Friday evening, Dyn announced the third cyberattack it had faced today ‘had been resolved.’

Wikileaks cyber attack
Wikileaks cyber attack

The revolt against the main stream media and in essence what represents the stalwart corporate elite comes as Wikileaks has already come under fire for its decision to publish around 20,000 from John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chair.

Criticism that many on the internet believe is undue, with many supporting the entity’s actions in bringing transparency to what many suspect has been underhanded US political meddling, which the mainstream media has been loathe to report, instead appearing to concentrate overtly on the alleged sexual improprieties of Republic Presidential contender, Donald Trump.

A report via politico told of New World Hackers representative using the alias Prophet saying, ‘The specific target is anything big,’

Adding: ‘We were testing our power at first.’

That said, digital security researchers and U.S. officials urged caution, saying there was scant evidence to determine who was behind the attack, warning that Anonymous and New World have ‘falsely taken credit for high-profile attacks in the past.’

White House press secretary Josh Earnest issued a statement Friday afternoon saying that the Department of Homeland Security was ‘monitoring this situation’ and would ‘take a close look at it.’ He called the actions ‘malicious, while declining to speculate on who might be responsible.

The statement comes after intelligence officials earlier in the week accused Russian hackers infiltrating political organizations, including the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, laundering their pilfered documents through digital fronts, including the hacker persona “Guccifer 2.0” and possibly WikiLeaks.

That said, to date authorities have yet to produce evidence that Russia was involved in Friday’s outages.

Throwing further light on what was most likely an orchestrated attack days in the making is a report via emptylighthouse who posited:

In order to do an attack like this, you must have planned significantly in advance, because the way these attacks work is that they hijack regular people’s computers using a virus or malware, and then that malware waits until the date of the attack to take action and start sending Internet data (packets) to the server that they want to take down.

The report goes on to dismiss that Wikileaks supporters having been behind the attack, while leaving open who could have had the muscle to orchestrate such a calamitous attack:

‘This makes it unlikely that Wikileaks is right — for Wikileaks’ supporters to have taken down these servers with such heavy traffic, they would need to have hijacked thousands — possibly hundreds of thousands — of computers all over the world. It is unlikely that they could spread malware this widely within days — or even weeks. It is much more likely that this was a preplanned attack that had nothing to do with Wikileaks and this week’s events.’

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