Major websites around the United States Friday were victim of a coordinated cyber-attack that WikiLeaks is saying its supporters were behind. It is now telling them to stop because “you proved your point.”
“Mr. Assange is still alive and WikiLeaks is still publishing. We ask supporters to stop taking down the US internet. You proved your point,” WikiLeaks tweeted out with an accompanying map of the areas of country affected by the attack.
Mr. Assange is still alive and WikiLeaks is still publishing. We ask supporters to stop taking down the US internet. You proved your point. pic.twitter.com/XVch196xyL
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 21, 2016
The cyber attack was in the form of a distributed denial of service, or DDos, which occurs when hackers overwhelm servers with useless data. According to Business Insider, the following websites were among those affected: DYN, Twitter, Etsy, Github, Soundcloud, Spotify, Heroku, Pagerdutity, Shopify, Okta, Zendesk, and Business Insider. Dyn is one of the largest Domain Name Services companies.
The U.S. government is investigating the attack and a senior intelligence official told NBC they do not believe state-actors are responsible. In 2010, WikiLeaks supporters launched “operation payback” and attacked Visa and Mastercard in a DDos attack.