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Pro-Hillary Clinton Site Hit With Cyber Attack

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Eric Lieberman Managing Editor
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Verrit, a news website dedicated to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was reportedly hacked Sunday just after the two-time presidential candidate tweeted out support for the media platform.

The site describes itself as “Media for the 65.8 million,” an apparent reference to the approximate amount of votes Clinton received in the 2016 president election. Verrit blames a number of factors for Clinton’s surprising loss other than the contender herself, including primary opponent Democratic Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, purported voter suppression, and the media.

“Hillary Clinton faced relentless vilification, imbalanced media coverage, and foreign propaganda, yet still attracted more votes than any presidential candidate in history except Barack Obama in 2008,” reads the site’s introductory page, which was written by Peter Daou, a former senior adviser to Clinton. (RELATED: Media Company Endorsed By Hillary Rewrites 2016 Without Her Mistakes)

“With the essence of American democracy at stake, 65.8 million people saw through the lies and smears and made a wise, patriotic choice. But they continue to be marginalized and harassed,” Daou, who is also the founder of the group #HillaryMen, a campaign arguing that opposition to Clinton is essentially misogynistic, added.

Clinton expressed joy after signing up for the media platform, while also asking if anyone else wants to get on board.

While Daou and other operators of the site presumably appreciate Clinton’s advocacy and promulgation, it may have attracted unwanted attention. The site was hit with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack not long after her social media post went live, according to Business Insider.

DDoS attacks occur when perpetrators infiltrate and take internet-connected devices hostage and subsequently direct them and the respective unique Internet Protocol (IP) addresses (the numerical label assigned to every device) to targeted online systems, completely inundating them in the process. The online systems become so overwhelmed that they are essentially rendered defective. (RELATED: Google Purges 300 Apps Used As Cyber Weapons Of Mass Destruction)

The cyber assault caused Verrit to stop loading for several hours, reports BI, but it is not clear where the attack originated from.

Nevertheless, the site appears to be back up and running smoothly. (RELATED: Hillary Clinton Signals She’s Not Ready To Go Away)

“Verrit’s purpose,” Daou concludes, “is to become their trusted source of political information and analysis; to provide them (and anyone like-minded) sanctuary in a chaotic media environment; to center their shared principles; and to do so with an unwavering commitment to truth and facts.”

Despite such a concession, Daou isn’t shying away from claims that the site will be based on facts, not subjectivity or opinion.

“We’re in a time now where you just no longer trust anything that you’re reading. Facts are now in question. Reality is now in question,” Daou said in an an interview with BI. “So we want to do something where we rigorously vet these facts and we actually stand by our research and put an authentication code on every fact that we put up.”

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