MSNBC: U.S. firm says denial of service attacks on site threatened its nearly 500,000 other clients
WikiLeaks went off-line late Thursday after a U.S. firm providing its domain name system said the controversial website had come under mass denial-of-service attacks.
EveryDNS.net said it had "terminated" its services to WikiLeaks as the attacks and ones expected in the future would "threaten the stability" of the company's services to nearly 500,000 other websites.
WikiLeaks has been continuing to release classified cables sent by U.S. officials, causing huge embarrassment to diplomats and world leaders amid growing outrage and calls for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to be prosecuted under the U.S. Espionage Act.
A warrant for his arrest has been issued in Sweden in connection with alleged sexual offenses, which he denies. His lawyers have refuted reports he is hiding from the law at an unknown location in the U.K., saying he is lying low because of threats made against him.
The EveryDNS.net statement came as Amazon.com said such denial of service attacks or political pressure from U.S. officials had not led it to stop hosting WikiLeaks.
Amazon said WikiLeaks had violated its terms of service by publishing the leaked documents as it did not "own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content."
In response to the website going off-line, WikiLeaks sent out a message on social media site Twitter appealing for financial support. >>> msnbc.com staff and news service reports | Friday, December 03, 2010
THE GUARDIAN: WikiLeaks fights to stay online after US company withdraws domain name: Everydns.net says attack against leaks site endangered other customers' service – effectively pushing site off the web >>> Charles Arthur and Josh Halliday | Friday, December 03, 2010
WikiLeaks is back online from Switzerland >>>
