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December 03, 2010, 5:56 AM EST
By Matthew Campbell
Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- WikiLeaks.org, the online whistle- blower that released about 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables, moved the website to Switzerland after its U.S. domain-name translation provider withdrew service.
WikiLeaks began directing viewers to WikiLeaks.ch rather than WikiLeaks.org this morning, it said on a Twitter feed. EveryDNS.net, which translates online addresses to “Internet protocol” numbers to provide access, terminated WikiLeaks’s service at 10 p.m. New York time, according to its website.
While fully removing information on the Web is “almost impossible,” repeated attacks can reduce its reach, said Stephen Wolthusen, a researcher in the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway, University of London. “What you want to present is a real website,” he said. “These entry points can be, essentially, forced off the net. It becomes much less user friendly for the average person.”
The EveryDNS shutdown, which WikiLeaks confirmed, occurred because electronic attacks on the site threatened the stability of access to other websites, EveryDNS said. Since it released the cables on Nov. 28, WikiLeaks has been the subject of so- called denial of service attacks, where hackers attempt to overwhelm a website with repeated requests for data.
“Any downtime of the wikileaks.org website has resulted from its failure to use another hosted DNS service provider,” EveryDNS said.
The Swiss Piracy Party, a political group that supports copyright and patent law changes, owns the domain name WikiLeaks.ch, which reroutes to WikiLeaks.org content, spokesman Denis Simonet said. Simonet said he was unsure if WikiLeaks had also moved to Swiss servers.
Active Investigation
The U.S., France, the U.K. and other countries have condemned the cable releases, which they say could endanger the lives of field personnel and hurt relations with allies.
Amazon.com Inc., the Seattle-based online retailer that also hosts websites on its servers, dropped the leak site earlier this week from its system.
In a blog post, Amazon said WikiLeaks could be “putting innocent people in jeopardy” by posting confidential documents, and was violating terms of service by posting material it doesn’t own.
The U.S. is pursuing an “active, ongoing criminal investigation” of the site and its founder, Australian-born Julian Assange, 39.
Other websites have had denial of service attacks. In July last year, attacks in South Korea caused the shutdown of sites including those of the presidential Blue House and the foreign and defense ministries. The South Korean government later blamed North Korea for the electronic assault, which infected an estimated 20,000 computers.
--With assistance from Carolyn Bandel in Zurich. Editors: Vidya Root, Simon Thiel
To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Campbell in Paris at mcampbell39@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Vidya Root at vroot@bloomberg.net.
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Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- WikiLeaks.org, the online whistle- blower that released about 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables, moved the website to Switzerland after its U.S. domain-name translation provider withdrew service.
WikiLeaks began directing viewers to WikiLeaks.ch rather than WikiLeaks.org this morning, it said on a Twitter feed. EveryDNS.net, which translates online addresses to “Internet protocol” numbers to provide access, terminated WikiLeaks’s service at 10 p.m. New York time, according to its website.
While fully removing information on the Web is “almost impossible,” repeated attacks can reduce its reach, said Stephen Wolthusen, a researcher in the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway, University of London. “What you want to present is a real website,” he said. “These entry points can be, essentially, forced off the net. It becomes much less user friendly for the average person.”
The EveryDNS shutdown, which WikiLeaks confirmed, occurred because electronic attacks on the site threatened the stability of access to other websites, EveryDNS said. Since it released the cables on Nov. 28, WikiLeaks has been the subject of so- called denial of service attacks, where hackers attempt to overwhelm a website with repeated requests for data.
“Any downtime of the wikileaks.org website has resulted from its failure to use another hosted DNS service provider,” EveryDNS said.
The Swiss Piracy Party, a political group that supports copyright and patent law changes, owns the domain name WikiLeaks.ch, which reroutes to WikiLeaks.org content, spokesman Denis Simonet said. Simonet said he was unsure if WikiLeaks had also moved to Swiss servers.
Active Investigation
The U.S., France, the U.K. and other countries have condemned the cable releases, which they say could endanger the lives of field personnel and hurt relations with allies.
Amazon.com Inc., the Seattle-based online retailer that also hosts websites on its servers, dropped the leak site earlier this week from its system.
In a blog post, Amazon said WikiLeaks could be “putting innocent people in jeopardy” by posting confidential documents, and was violating terms of service by posting material it doesn’t own.
The U.S. is pursuing an “active, ongoing criminal investigation” of the site and its founder, Australian-born Julian Assange, 39.
Other websites have had denial of service attacks. In July last year, attacks in South Korea caused the shutdown of sites including those of the presidential Blue House and the foreign and defense ministries. The South Korean government later blamed North Korea for the electronic assault, which infected an estimated 20,000 computers.
--With assistance from Carolyn Bandel in Zurich. Editors: Vidya Root, Simon Thiel
To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Campbell in Paris at mcampbell39@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Vidya Root at vroot@bloomberg.net.
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