- The Washington Times - Thursday, August 31, 2017

Individuals attempting to load the official WikiLeaks website Thursday morning were greeted instead by a message attributed to OurMine, a hacking outfit previously linked to recent cyberattacks suffered by victims including BuzzFeed and HBO.

“Hi, it’s OurMine (Security Group), don’t worry we are just testing your…. blablablab, oh wait, this is not a security test! Wikileaks, remember when you challenged us to hack you?” the message read in part.

WikiLeaks said it wasn’t hacked, however, and that the message appeared as a result of an attack targeting Domain Name System (DNS) servers — digital directories that enable internet users to access content by inputting web addresses rather than their lengthy numerical identifiers.

By duping DNS servers, the perpetrators made it so that people attempting to access content typically associated with WikiLeaks.org were instead taken to a separate domain under the attackers’ control.

The hijacking was first noticed Wednesday evening, and individuals attempting to visit the official WikiLeaks website reported seeing either the OurMine statement or an error message into Thursday before WikiLeaks began rendering correctly.

“WikiLeaks severs [sic] have not been hacked. There have been two types of internet infrastructure (DNS) attacks,” WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange tweeted Thursday. He did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

OurMine first gained notoriety in 2016 for hijacking the social media accounts of several high-profile internet entrepreneurs including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, among others. It compromised BuzzFeed last October a day after the website published an article about a purported OurMine member and earlier this month commandeered several social media accounts belonging to HBO.

WikiLeaks has routinely come under attack from hacktivists and governments alike for publishing classified material, and Mr. Assange is currently the subject of an ongoing federal probe initiated by the Obama administration 2010.

• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.

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