Wikileaks’ DNS pulls plug, citing collateral DDoS damage
Domain name provider EveryDNS has pulled the plug on Wikileaks after giving the site 24 hours’ notice that it could not put up with the denial of service attacks the site was attracting.
The DNS provider said that it had sent messages by email and via Twitter and through the chat function of its website to warn Wikileaks that it was in breach of its terms and conditions and was at risk of termination. No response was received. Messages were sent 10pm EST 1 December. Services were terminated at 10pm 2 December.
The provider said: “Any downtime of the wikileaks.org website has resulted from its failure to use another hosted DNS service provider.”
EveryDNS said:
Specifically, the services were terminated for violation of the provision which states that “Member shall not interfere with another Member’s use and enjoyment of the Service or another entity’s use and enjoyment of similar services”. The interference at issues arises from the fact that wikileaks.org has become the target of multiple distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks. These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites.
The temporary loss of its website will have little impact on Wikileaks. Various Wikileak mirror sites are available and the files are also on BitTorrent and elsewhere.
Wikileaks’ various media partners are also hosting the cables; today’s “revelation” is that British troops in Afghanistan were over-stretched and under-resourced.
Meanwhile Wikileaks spokesman Julian Assange, currently in the UK, is wanted for sex offences in Sweden where many Wikileaks operations are based. He is the subject of an Interpol Red Notice, which is a procedure used to “seek the arrest or provisional arrest of wanted persons with a view to extradition”. The Mail predicts he will be arrested in the next few days. Police sources inform the Reg that the Red Notice has little relevance in intra-European cases, where a European warrant is required. Assange lost an appeal against issue of such a warrant yesterday.
The colourful leakmeister is believed to have given police his address when he arrived in Britain several weeks ago.
EveryDNS explains why it ended Wikileaks’ services.