by US firm
Cyberwar against whistleblower site continues apace,
but latest setback is minor inconvenience
The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.org has become the Swiss WikiLeaks.ch after its original name was dropped by its US-based domain name service provider earlier this morning, making it unavailable to most internet users.
The news shows that while hotheads in the United States upset at the website's release of classified US files over the past year call for the extra-judicial execution of WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange, the real dirty war is continuing apace on the internet.
The service that EveryDNS.net provided to WikiLeaks was the translation of its 'IP quads' – which are a series of unique numbers and dots that identify every website – into language that ordinary humans use, in this case the web address, 'WikiLeaks.org'.
By dropping WikiLeaks.org, EveryDNS was effectively making the whistleblowing website unavailable to the majority of internet users.
But EveryDNS.net is not crucial and internet users can still reach the WikiLeaks website by typing http://213.251.145.96/ into their internet browser address bar. This morning, users of Twitter were publicising this IP address in an effort to minimise the impact of EveryDNS.net's move. WikiLeaks itself later announced that internet users could access its website by going to WikiLeaks.ch.
In justification for ditching WikiLeaks, EveryDNS.net said that the whistleblowing website had breached its terms and conditions by becoming the victim of repeated 'denial of service' – or DDOS – attacks in the past week following the leaking of thousands of sensitive US diplomatic cables.
The DDOS attacks, it said "threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites".
EveryDNS.net's action is the latest inconvenience to be suffered by WikiLeaks in its cyberwar with the US government and its sympathisers. Earlier this week, the US website Amazon.com stopped hosting WikiLeaks, prompting the site to fall back on its so-called "bulletproof" Swedish servers.
Last night Amazon denied it had come under US government pressure to ditch WikiLeaks.
It said that the whistleblowing site was in breach of several clauses of its terms and conditions: "For example, our terms of service state that 'you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content... that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity.’ It’s clear that WikiLeaks doesn’t own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content.
"Further, it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren't putting innocent people in jeopardy."
In reply, WikiLeaks tweeted simply: "Amazon's press release does not accord with the facts on public record. It is one thing to be cowardly. Another to lie about it."o
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