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<div><div class="postBody" readability="85"> As its operations have come under increasing financial and political pressure, WikiLeaks has quietly bolstered its electronic defenses in an attempt to become more difficult to censor.
In the last few days, the portion of WikiLeaks' infrastructure that relied on a company in Reno, Nevada has been shifted outside the United States to a provider in Toronto. Instead of employing only one company to direct traffic to WikiLeaks.ch, currently the organization's primary Web site, 14 providers are now being used to provide redundancy in case of legal or extralegal attack.
The reconfiguration comes as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested today on sexual assault-related charges in London -- charges that he strenuously denies and says are politically-motivated -- and was denied bail. An extradition hearing has been scheduled for December 14.
Since WikiLeaks began releasing confidential U.S. State Department cables last month, at a pace that seems guaranteed to maximize the embarrassment for Washington officialdom, an increasing number of service providers have distanced themselves. The list includes Amazon.com, PayPal, Visa, EveryDNS, and, as CNET was the first to report yesterday, MasterCard. It's also been the target of a flood of denial-of-service attacks designed to overwhelm its infrastructure so other visitors can't get through.
Some politicians have called on companies to sever their connections with WikiLeaks, making it more risky for WikiLeaks to rely on U.S.-based infrastructure. Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who heads the Homeland Security Committee, said last week that: "No responsible company -- whether American or foreign -- should assist Wikileaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials." And one congressman wants WikiLeaks to be designated a "terrorist" organization, which would make it a crime for any company or individual to provide it with material support.
As part of its technological counter-measures undertaken since Friday, WikiLeaks has turned to servers operated by the Swedish Pirate Party, which previously signaled support for the document-sharing effort in August. And the number of mirror sites continues to grow at the pace of one every few minutes, topping 1,000 this afternoon.
The counter-measures are designed to keep WikiLeaks' constellation of Web sites -- including WikiLeaks.is, WikiLeaks.fr, WikiLeaks.de, WikiLeaks.nl, and WikiLeaks.no -- online in case of a denial of service attack or other, less direct, pressure.
Like nearly every Web site, WikiLeaks relies on two different infrastructure pieces to function: a link with the Internet's Domain Name System, or DNS, and a hosting provider. Because both components have recently come under pressure, WikiLeaks has been armoring both. (DNS providers translate between the human-readable address CNET.com and the numeric address 216.239.113.101.)
As of last Friday, WikiLeaks.ch was using only one DNS provider, swebflex.ch, which left it vulnerable to legal attacks and denial of service attacks. As of this afternoon, it's using 14 of them for redundancy:
Mark Jeftovic, president of EasyDNS, wrote in a
In the last few days, the portion of WikiLeaks' infrastructure that relied on a company in Reno, Nevada has been shifted outside the United States to a provider in Toronto. Instead of employing only one company to direct traffic to WikiLeaks.ch, currently the organization's primary Web site, 14 providers are now being used to provide redundancy in case of legal or extralegal attack.
The reconfiguration comes as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested today on sexual assault-related charges in London -- charges that he strenuously denies and says are politically-motivated -- and was denied bail. An extradition hearing has been scheduled for December 14.
Since WikiLeaks began releasing confidential U.S. State Department cables last month, at a pace that seems guaranteed to maximize the embarrassment for Washington officialdom, an increasing number of service providers have distanced themselves. The list includes Amazon.com, PayPal, Visa, EveryDNS, and, as CNET was the first to report yesterday, MasterCard. It's also been the target of a flood of denial-of-service attacks designed to overwhelm its infrastructure so other visitors can't get through.
Some politicians have called on companies to sever their connections with WikiLeaks, making it more risky for WikiLeaks to rely on U.S.-based infrastructure. Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who heads the Homeland Security Committee, said last week that: "No responsible company -- whether American or foreign -- should assist Wikileaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials." And one congressman wants WikiLeaks to be designated a "terrorist" organization, which would make it a crime for any company or individual to provide it with material support.
As part of its technological counter-measures undertaken since Friday, WikiLeaks has turned to servers operated by the Swedish Pirate Party, which previously signaled support for the document-sharing effort in August. And the number of mirror sites continues to grow at the pace of one every few minutes, topping 1,000 this afternoon.
The counter-measures are designed to keep WikiLeaks' constellation of Web sites -- including WikiLeaks.is, WikiLeaks.fr, WikiLeaks.de, WikiLeaks.nl, and WikiLeaks.no -- online in case of a denial of service attack or other, less direct, pressure.
Like nearly every Web site, WikiLeaks relies on two different infrastructure pieces to function: a link with the Internet's Domain Name System, or DNS, and a hosting provider. Because both components have recently come under pressure, WikiLeaks has been armoring both. (DNS providers translate between the human-readable address CNET.com and the numeric address 216.239.113.101.)
As of last Friday, WikiLeaks.ch was using only one DNS provider, swebflex.ch, which left it vulnerable to legal attacks and denial of service attacks. As of this afternoon, it's using 14 of them for redundancy:
wikileaks.ch. ns1.twisted4life.com.
wikileaks.ch. elrido.no-ip.org.
wikileaks.ch. dns2.easydns.net.
wikileaks.ch. s2.s3cr3t.de.
wikileaks.ch. dns1.syshack.org.
wikileaks.ch. ns2.easydns.com.
wikileaks.ch. lou.porcus.ch.
wikileaks.ch. marmotta.brabbel.ch.
wikileaks.ch. ns1.buzzernet.net.
wikileaks.ch. dns.wikileaks.ch.
wikileaks.ch. v217241437.yourvserver.net.
wikileaks.ch. dns2.syshack.org.
wikileaks.ch. ns1.pcdog.ch.
wikileaks.ch. arjeplog.scnr.ch.
Similarly, WikiLeaks.nl used Nevada-based rollernet.us for DNS service last week and was hosted in Sweden at only one IP address. Now it's using Toronto-based EasyDNS for DNS service and, for Web hosting, no fewer than five different IP addresses in the Netherlands. wikileaks.ch. elrido.no-ip.org.
wikileaks.ch. dns2.easydns.net.
wikileaks.ch. s2.s3cr3t.de.
wikileaks.ch. dns1.syshack.org.
wikileaks.ch. ns2.easydns.com.
wikileaks.ch. lou.porcus.ch.
wikileaks.ch. marmotta.brabbel.ch.
wikileaks.ch. ns1.buzzernet.net.
wikileaks.ch. dns.wikileaks.ch.
wikileaks.ch. v217241437.yourvserver.net.
wikileaks.ch. dns2.syshack.org.
wikileaks.ch. ns1.pcdog.ch.
wikileaks.ch. arjeplog.scnr.ch.
Mark Jeftovic, president of EasyDNS, wrote in a