According to ethical hacking specialists, over the past weekend multiple Wikipedia sites for some regions of Europe and the Middle East experienced failures due to a denial of service (DDoS) attack; the organization claims that the incident is already being investigated through the Wikimedia Foundation, which is responsible for overseeing various aspects of the online encyclopedia.
“This Monday, access to all sites affected
by the DDoS attack was restored; we will continue to work on monitoring our
infrastructure and investigate the causes of the incident,” says a
statement from the foundation.
Wikipedia is one of the 10 most popular
websites in the world, so it is estimated that millions of users experienced
the consequences of the DDoS attack. Ethical hacking experts believe the attack
began last Friday, affecting Wikipedia sites in countries such as France,
Germany, Italy and some sectors of the Middle East, mainly Israel.
“Due to its popularity, Wikipedia is an
attractive target for malicious users. The Wikimedia Foundation team condemns
such attacks, as they are not only a threat against this organization, but they
violate the universal right to free access to information,” the
foundation’s statement adds.
Wikipedia security teams were alerted in a
timely manner on service failures; in addition, platforms such as
downdetector.com and Netblocks Internet access monitoring group helped conclude
that these failures were due to DDoS attacks, which were amplified by the use
of unsecured devices.
Although the foundation did not report on the
origin of the attacks, through the Twitter account @UkDrillas, a suspected
group of hackers claimed responsibility for the attacks, even posting some screenshots
as evidence of their claims.
Whoever is behind this Twitter account was also
held responsible for DDoS attacks that caused multiple failures in the online
game World of Warcraft this weekend. The account was suspended on Sunday,
September 8.
Terry Ray, an ethical hacking specialist at
security firm Imperva, mentions that the hackers’ motivations to launch such
attacks may vary depending on the target. In addition, the expert believes that
companies should consider these attacks as a possibility and implement a
protocol to address such incidents. “Recovery costs could be higher than
prevention costs,” he added.
Despite the efforts of law enforcement agencies
to curb this activity, ethical hacking specialists from the International
Institute of Cyber Security (IICS) ensure that it is still very easy to find
someone willing to deploy an attack DDoS against an individual or organization
in exchange for the correct sum. Earlier this year, a British citizen was
sentenced to prison following a DDoS attack in Liberia, Africa. The defendant
claimed that an Internet service provider operating in that country paid him
about $100k USD to deploy the attack on a rival company.
