WikiLeaks To Its Supporters: 'Stop Taking Down the US Internet, You Proved Your Point' (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: The Internet took a turn for the worst this morning, when large parts of the DNS network were brought down by a massive distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) targeting DNS provider Dyn. If you couldn't access Amazon, Twitter, and a host of other large sites and online services earlier today, this was why. Now, if a couple of additional tweets are to be believed, it appears supporters of WikiLeaks are responsible for this large scale DDoS attack on Dynamic Network Services Inc's Dyn DNS service. WikiLeaks is alleging that a group of its supporters launched today's DDoS attack in retaliation for the Obama administration using its influence to push the Ecuadorian government to limit Assange's internet access. Another earlier tweet reassures supporters that Mr. Assange is still alive, which -- along with a photo of heavily armed police posted this morning -- implies that he may have been (or may still be) in danger, and directly asks said supporters to stop the attack. WikiLeaks published this tweet a little after 5PM: "Mr. Assange is still alive and WikiLeaks is still publishing. We ask supporters to stop taking down the US internet. You proved your point." It was followed by: "The Obama administration should not have attempted to misuse its instruments of state to stop criticism of its ruling party candidate."

Comments

Re: Wikileaks is a toxic organisation.

[TellarHK]

Start here, and you'll see plenty of source links.

http://www.politifact.com/trut...

Competing theories

[Okian Warrior]

There were Trump leaks? News to me. It seems like Assange has just been going after Hillary because he knows she won't pardon him.

There are really multiple competing theories on this.

Maybe Assange has been going after them because he leaks what he has, and doesn't have dirt on the other side.

Maybe Assange has been going after them because they are more corrupt than the other side, so he has much more dirt on them.

Maybe Assange is going after them because Hillary conspired to have him killed, and took "legan and extra legal" steps to silence him.

Your position doesn't look too strong.

Who are the "morons" again?

Re:Competing theories

[Rei]

1) TruePundit is not a real news website.
2) It's much simpler than that. Julian Assange is a right-winger - a self-described fan of Ron Paul, anti-abortion, and with a long history of supporting authoritarian leaders worldwide.

Re:Competing theories

[Rei]

Here's some past examples of True Pundit "journalism" for you.

  * Clinton secretly wearing mini stealth earbud to receive answers from her team during the debate

  * Clinton was using secret hand signals to tell Lester Holt what to say

  * Claims Clinton had a medical issue during the debate and Trump mouthed the word "Seizure"

  * Offers a $1m reward (as if a website like True Pundit has $1m) for Clinton's medical records, suggesting that she has "dementia, post-concussion syndrome, Parkinson’s disease, brain tumor, brain injury, complex partial seizures, and/or many more alleged ailments" and is followed by a doctor disguised as a Secret Service agent carrying an autoinjector of diazepam.

Re: Competing theories

[Anonymous Coward]

Well known, or repeatedly claimed? There's a difference, you know.

There's no evidence whatsoever that she's cheated at the debates, as every claimed bit of evidence to that effect has been debunked by pretty much everyone that's worked in that area.

You know how she does so well at debates? Fucking practice. She spends days, full days, before each debate with coaches and people playing the role of opposition and moderators. She goes over the questions, which are for the most part obvious to anyone that knows the categories, and those are made public when the candidates agree on terms.

It would be HARDER to respond the way she does, quickly and without undue pauses, if someone were speaking into her ear. And if she knew the questions beforehand she'd probably have more concise responses. When she's on stage, she responds to everything that comes up, even Trump's nonsense quickly and without hesitation.

Re:Equal amounts?

[fufufang]

Wikileaks hadn't been pushing Trump leaks as hard as Clinton leaks. Now its supports are trying to take down US infrastructure. I used to think that Wikileaks is a neutral organisation promoting government transparency, but not any more. I kind of feel that they are up to no good.

What do you propose? Should Wikileaks hold off on Clinton until they have an equal amount on Trump?

Is that your definition of neutral? That they must expose corruption in equal amounts for both sides?

How about not sensationalising everything they publish? How about not making political statements against Clinton? They can leak stuff without appearing to be political, you know.

Re:Doesn't really matter who fired the shot

[yuriklastalov]

How do you figure? He's talking about all the "Internet of Things" garbage Sillicon Valley is so in love these days. You know, those little spy devices they get you to pay for and then leverage for data collection?

Anyway, these smart lights, hubs, thermostats, toasters, etc., are wildly insecure, to the point of some even having an open telnet port with root access! So we have all these fancy networked gewgaws which get pwned by hackers and used to DDoS anyone they feel like.

To be perfectly clear: These devices didn't exist as little as four years ago, so banning them from the internet would not in any way reduce its functionality. Other than that a bunch of rich nerds will have to remember to turn their fucking thermostats to the right setting before they go to work, nothing of value will be lost.

The Internet of Things is a solution looking for a problem and a way for sleazy tech companies to fleece the consumer. That it has ended up being co-opted by (other) scumbags to do their (differently) evil bidding is just one more nail in the coffin.

Re: Wikileaks is a toxic organisation.

[cfalcon]

> It's morphed into Breitbart.

It's morphed into Jill Stein, not breitbart. Republicans don't like their nominee being called a "pied piper candidate", for instance, which Wikileaks absolutely called him (the quote is from a Democrat email, of course). The Green party is absolutely calling out the Democratic party too, remember.

Also note that Assange spoke at Jill Stein's nomination. He didn't endorse anyone (neither did Wikileaks), but when asked whether he prefers Clinton or Trump his quote was "you are asking if I prefer cholera or gonorrhea".

Re: Wikileaks is a toxic organisation.

[cfalcon]

Politifact is run by the Tampa Bay Times, which has endorsed Hillary Clinton. Right wing sites throw around its somewhat loose ties to Clinton Foundation donors, which you may or may not find compelling (I don't). There's also a whole (right wing) site devoted to calling out stuff politifact does, http://www.politifactbias.com/ . Those claims at least can be accepted or rejected on a case-by-case basis.

When a site claims to be neutral or know facts, even if it is launched and initially operated with the BEST of intentions, there's a big chance it will become biased via some method or other, soon enough.

Re: Wikileaks is a toxic organisation.

[TellarHK]

Pretty much every media outlet that doesn't have implicit bias in its very DNA has endorsed Hillary, including ones that haven't endorsed a Democrat at all in over 100 years, ones that have only endorsed candidates two or three times in a century, and as of October 6th the number of endorsements for Donald Trump among major American newspapers sat at a big fat zero.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/don...

The only "conspiracy" that would be on par than that, if it were actually indicative of one, would be climate science. However, you can usually find maybe 2-3 people in every group of 100 climate scientists that will disagree.