Was massive hack that floored Amazon, Twitter and Reddit PRACTICE for election day?
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Was massive hack that floored Amazon, Twitter and Reddit PRACTICE for election day? Wikileaks supporters and hackers say attack was revenge for shutting down Assange - but many fear it's just a warm-up
- Cyber attacks forced websites including Amazon and Twitter offline
- Github, SoundCloud and PayPal websites were also reported to be down
- Outage appeared to be primarily affecting web users on the US East Coast
- Department of Homeland Security is 'investigating all potential causes'
- Some claim it could be a precursor to an attempt to disrupt the US Presidential election further
- WikiLeaks believes its supporters were responsible for the attacks
- Group called New World Hackers also claimed responsibility via Twitter
A massive co-ordinated series of cyber attacks forced hundreds of major websites including Amazon and Twitter offline Friday - and some fear the security breach could be 'practice for election day'.
WikiLeaks believes its supporters were responsible and urged them to 'stop taking down the US internet', saying: 'Mr Assange is still alive and WikiLeaks is still publishing.'
It then tweeted: 'The Obama administration should not have attempted to misuse its instruments of state to stop criticism of its ruling party candidate.'
The Ecuadorian government switched off Assange's internet service in its UK embassy Sunday after he released another tranche of emails showing the contents of a speech given by Hillary Clinton to Goldman Sachs.
WikiLeaks accused John Kerry and the US Government of asking Ecuador to shut down Assange's internet connection, but the South American country denied it came under any pressure from the US or any other government.
The Department of Homeland Security has already launched an urgent investigation into Friday's crash, amid claims it could be a precursor to an attempt to disrupt the US Presidential election further.
The White House called the disruption malicious and a hacker group claimed responsibility, though its assertion couldn't be verified.
The massive co-ordinated series of cyber attacks has forced hundreds of major websites from Amazon to Twitter offline across the globe - and WikiLeaks believes its supporters are to blame
Internet service company Dyn, which controls the 'address book' of the internet for dozens of major companies, said that it had suffered its first denial of service (DDoS) attack shortly after 6AM ET (11AM BST), in an attack that mostly affected the east coast of the US.
It told CNBC the attack is 'well planned and executed, coming from tens of millions of IP addresses at same time.'
It confirmed a second attack at 1PM ET, which appeared to be centered on UK servers, and later said 'several' attacks were underway on servers across the globe, with the west coast being particularly badly hit.
'The complexity of the attacks is what is making it so difficult for us,' said Kyle York, the company's chief strategy officer. 'What they are actually doing is moving around the world with each attack.' He said an East Coast data center was hit first; attacks on an offshore target followed later.
Dyn said Friday evening a third cyber attack 'has been resolved'.
It was not immediately clear who was responsible and Gillian Christensen of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the agency was 'investigating all potential causes.'
The Department of Homeland Security has already launched an urgent investigation into the crash, amid claims it could be a precursor to an attempt to disrupt the US Presidential election further.
Political commentor Keith Olbermann even raised the possibility it could be a precursor to an attack on election day.
'Say, not to panic anybody, but what if the (attacks) today were practice for 11/8 ?' he tweeted.
Despite WikiLeaks' claims its supporters were behind the attacks, members of a shadowy collective that calls itself New World Hackers claimed responsibility via Twitter.
They said they organized networks of connected 'zombie' computers called botnets that threw a staggering 1.2 terabits per second of data at the Dyn-managed servers.
'We didn't do this to attract federal agents, only test power,' two collective members who identified themselves as 'Prophet' and 'Zain' told an AP reporter via Twitter direct message exchange.
'Prophet' said hacktivists of the broad, more amorphous Anonymous collective piled on in the third wave of attacks on Friday afternoon.
It was not immediately possible to verify the claims.
Dyn officials said they have received no claim of responsibility, but are working with law enforcement.
The collective, @NewWorldHacking on Twitter, has in the past claimed responsibility for similar attacks against sites including ESPN.com in September and the BBC on December 31.
The collective has also claimed responsibility for cyberattacks against Islamic State. The two said about 30 people have access to the @NewWorkdHacking Twitter account. They claim 20 are in Russia and 10 in China.
Another collective member the AP previously communicated with via direct message called himself 'Ownz' and identified himself as a 19-year-old in London. He told the AP that the group — or at least he — sought only to expose security vulnerabilities.
The cyber attack meant that millions of internet users could not access the websites of major online companies such as Netflix and Reddit as well as the crafts marketplace Etsy and the software developer site Github, according to media reports.
The website Gizmodo said it had received reports of difficulty at sites for media outlets including CNN, The Guardian, Wired, HBO and People as well as the money transfer service PayPal.
'This has prevented some of our customers from being able to pay with PayPal in certain regions,' said Paypal spokeswoman Amanda Miller.'PayPal was not attacked directly, nor were any of our core services to business impacted in the disruption.'
Amazon.com Inc's web services division, one of the world's biggest cloud computing companies, also disclosed an outage that lasted several hours on Friday morning.
Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Dyn, told Reuters he was not sure if the outages at Dyn and Amazon were connected.
'We provide service to Amazon but theirs is a complex network so it is hard to be definitive about causality at the moment,' he said.
Amazon could not immediately be reached for comment.
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