China, Hackers Do Not Like WikiLeaks
It would seem the People’s Republic of China does not like WikiLeaks, the site that “publishes and comments on leaked documents alleging government and corporate misconduct.” China feels so strongly against WikiLeaks that it put the site behind the “Great Firewall of China”, thus blocking access to the site.
WikiLeaks is not alone behind the Great Firewall of China. Behind it you will also find IMDb, the highly popular online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, and so on, and IsoHunt, the popular torrent site.
Why would China do block access to WikiLeaks? The explanation is right on WikiLEaks’ front page:
“On Sunday 28th Novembre 2010, Wikileaks began publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The cables, which date from 1966 to the end of February this year, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified Secret.”
It’s not just China that doesn’t like WikiLeaks – hackers do not like the site either. Shortly after WikiLeaks started publishing the thousands of classified memos between U.S. diplomats, the site was targeted by a distributed-denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack). A hacker known online as the “Jester”, who calls himself a “hacktivist for good” took credit for the DDoS attack on WikiLeaks.
AT 6:29PM on Nov28, WikiLeaks tweeted the following: “We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack.” At 7:02PM the Jester tweeted the following: “www.wikileaks.org - TANGO DOWN - INDEFINITLEY - for threatening the lives of our troops and 'other assets'.”
The general consensus among security experts is that the Jester may have been able to pull off the attack, that he is indeed responsible for the WikiLeaks attack. WikiLeaks did not acknowledge the fact that the Jester is responsible for the DDoS attack. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said “unknown hackers” are to blame for the attack.
At the time of writing this WikiLeaks is under another DDoS attack. About a couple of minutes ago the site tweeted that "DDOS attack now exceeding 10 Gigabits a second."
WikiLeaks is not alone behind the Great Firewall of China. Behind it you will also find IMDb, the highly popular online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, and so on, and IsoHunt, the popular torrent site.
Why would China do block access to WikiLeaks? The explanation is right on WikiLEaks’ front page:
“On Sunday 28th Novembre 2010, Wikileaks began publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The cables, which date from 1966 to the end of February this year, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified Secret.”
It’s not just China that doesn’t like WikiLeaks – hackers do not like the site either. Shortly after WikiLeaks started publishing the thousands of classified memos between U.S. diplomats, the site was targeted by a distributed-denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack). A hacker known online as the “Jester”, who calls himself a “hacktivist for good” took credit for the DDoS attack on WikiLeaks.
AT 6:29PM on Nov28, WikiLeaks tweeted the following: “We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack.” At 7:02PM the Jester tweeted the following: “www.wikileaks.org - TANGO DOWN - INDEFINITLEY - for threatening the lives of our troops and 'other assets'.”
The general consensus among security experts is that the Jester may have been able to pull off the attack, that he is indeed responsible for the WikiLeaks attack. WikiLeaks did not acknowledge the fact that the Jester is responsible for the DDoS attack. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said “unknown hackers” are to blame for the attack.
At the time of writing this WikiLeaks is under another DDoS attack. About a couple of minutes ago the site tweeted that "DDOS attack now exceeding 10 Gigabits a second."
