At this point I don't know whether the DDOS attacks are being launched by bored hkrz, governments, Julian Assange himself, or a combination of all three. But I was struck with a thought when I looked at the tweet that Mashable quoted.
WikiLeaks,org domain killed by US everydns.net after claimed mass attacks KEEP US STRONG https://donations.datacell.com/
Incidentally, Mashable noticed that WikiLeaks emphasized "the fact that EveryDNS.net is a U.S. company." Also note the use of the word "claimed" in the tweet. It's fun to be a paranoid conspiracy theorist.
But take a look at the last part of the tweet. At this point WikiLeaks has already been removed from Amazon, possibly at the bidding of a U.S. Senator, and has lost its DNS provider, probably due to DDOS attacks.
And WikiLeaks honestly expects its enemies to keep its funding pipeline donations.datacell.com open?
And even if the site (or a cache or mirror) remains up, the site identifies the banks and other organizations (PayPal, MasterCard, Visa) that are the funnels for the cash for WikiLeaks. If Julian Assange is truly as paranoid as he appears to be, doesn't he worry that the FBI and the CIA and the BBC, B.B. King, Doris Day, and Matt Busby will simply shift their attacks to THESE entities? Perhaps the CIA will reactivate the volcano in Iceland.
Incidentally, at least one of the DDOS masters has been identified.
A self-proclaimed "hacktivist" said Tuesday he's the computer expert who knocked rogue Web site WikiLeaks offline for several hours through a distributed denial of service attack.
The hacker, who calls himself The Jester and goes by the name th3j35t3r on Twitter, said he was motivated to take down WikiLeaks for patriotic reasons. He also said his other targets include Web sites used by Al Qaeda and other terrorists groups for recruiting purposes.
And @th3j35t3r made an interesting point:
If I was a wikileaks 'source' right now I'd be getting a little twitchy, if they cant protect their own site, how can they protect a src?
As for me, I'm waiting for the WikiLeaksLeaks site that will provide all of this information, as well as leaked documents regarding Assange's legal troubles in Sweden. (WikiLeaks hasn't gotten around to leaking THOSE documents yet, apparently.) While waiting for wikileaksleaks.org, I guess we can read this, which is pretty funny:
Cc: wmreditor[a t]waynemadsenreport.com,
funtimesahead[a t]lists.riseup.net
From: Julien Assange
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 21:07:48 -0600
To: John Young
Subject: [WL] Re: Wikileaks Suspects You
[This is a restricted internal development mailinglist for w-i-k-i-l-e-a-k-s-.-o-r-g.
Please do not mention that word directly in these discussions; refer instead to 'WL'.
This list is housed at riseup.net, an activist collective in Seattle with an established lawyer
and plenty of backbone.]
John, can you xxxx the reference to "IQ.ORG" in that document near
"my daughters photo".