Saudi hackers carried out a DNS attack against the WikiLeaks website
According to reports from August 31, 2017, the WikiLeaks website has been defaced by a Saudi hacker group named OurMine. The attack was apparently carried out by DNS poisoning, not directly on the website servers, which actually were not hacked, but on DNS servers which are responsible for routing users’ requests asking for wikileaks.org, changing the target into a link prepared in advance by the hackers. Thus, for visitors, the website appeared different than usual.
This has also been confirmed by the group spokesman. The attack has been carried out following a previous challenge by the organization against this hacker group, in which ostensibly private details of the members of OurMine were published, and in the wake of two DDoS attacks carried out by the group against the organization website, in December 2015 and July 2016.
Julian Assange made clear that the website had not be hacked and explained that it had been a DNS attack.
WikiLeaks Twitter account also published a denial that the website had been hacked,
Claiming that it had actually been fake news.
The group’s Twitter account had been shut down some time after the attack.
