If you tried bring down WikiLeaks late Wednesday evening , you might ’ve gotten the impression that the website was hacked . For now at least , that does n’t appear to be the display case .
For some substance abuser , wikileaks.org come along to be defaced . The musical phrase “ OURMINE ” was just suddenly there , splashed across a blackground in crimson and white letters . Above it read , “ hack by OurMine , ” while below the self - describe cyberpunk go forth a message bemock both Julian Assange and Anonymous .
It appearshttps://t.co/18SwCRVBRywas hack ; now seems to be offline@wikileakspic.twitter.com/5CM86AybE7
— Claire Phipps ( @Claire_Phipps)August 31 , 2017
But it does n’t appear that WikiLeaks itself was in reality hacked at all — neither the website nor Assange ’s host moderate an endless trove of classified US governing documents seem to be compromised . In fact , even while the homepage appeared to be deface , the land site itself persist accessible to those who have weirdly memorized the IP savoir-faire or otherwise just knew where to look it up . In a tweet this morning , Wikileaks denied that their servers had been compromised .
There is a fake young storey circulating that WikiLeaks servers have been cut . It is fictive .
— WikiLeaks ( @wikileaks)August 31 , 2017
The illusion was accomplished through what ’s called DNS hijacking , an attack on the area name server used to translates a substance abuser favorable URL like “ wikileaks.org ” into its like IP speech . If you ’re new here , this is how you enter the content hosted on the website ’s owner server — for instance , Assange ’s nifty collection ofCIA exploitsandDNC emails .
In this case , the DNS was reprogrammed so that whenever someone typed “ wikileaks.org ” into their internet browser , it directed them not to Assange ’s server , but one controlled by OurMine , whoever the hell they are .
legion mellow - visibility “ hacker ” ( if we ’re using that word for their hijacking ) have been attributed to the group over the past year . They gotMark Zuckerberg ’s Twitter and Pinterest accounts last year;TechCrunchandBuzzFeedshortly after ; andHBOearlier this calendar month . ( Then again , who at this point hasn’thacked HBO ? )
Some internet sleuths , relying solely on circumstance clues , concluded OurMine may be connect to a collective of Indonesian hackers . The “ favicon , ” or tab ikon , on the false WikiLeaks pageboy also seem on a separate website depict below , for instance , and that internet site was supposedly hack by someone calling themselves “ Civilian . ”
The Thomas Nelson Page also employ standardised language as OurMine , such as “ Your security is blue . ” It also just plainly states : “ Indonesian hacker . ”
However , the best and the unsound affair about the internet is that people can claim to be anyone from anywhere at anytime , and this survive doubly so for hackers . If one affair is sure , it ’s that ascription in the consequence of a cyber offence is unfixed at best , and at defective a unadulterated beguilement .
The only other secret is how OurMine deal to hijack WikiLeaks ’ DNS in the first place . It could ’ve been a malicious intrusion , but it ’s also wholly possible they just know a guy with administrative access code . ( Statistically , the solution is nearly always that someone gotphished . )
Since this is WikiLeaks , you ’re likely to hear someone claim that it was “ believably the administration . ” But given the nominal impact and scurvy degree of sophistication involved , you should just tell Alex Jones to lay off chasing you down the street with his shirt off .
For now , the only risk to visiting WikiLeaks seems to be ending up on an NSA watchlist or convincing yourself that words like “ pizza ” are the key fruit to a vast left - wing government cabal after several hours spent poring over boring Clinton campaign emails .
If you ’re wondering about OurMine ’s boeuf with Anonymous — and there ’s perfectly no reason you should care — here ’s a cached edition of anow - deleted tweetin which they claimed to have doxed them . I guess that did n’t work out .
Gizmodo hit out to OurMine via an e-mail savoir-faire they publicized and we ’ll update if we get a reply .
Julian AssangeSecurityWikiLeaks
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