The “free encyclopedia” that usually provides community-driven articles about nearly all things known by the human being, Wikipedia, suffered a DDoS attack on crowdsourced knowledge on Friday night.
The characteristics of the attack were
suspicious, as it seemed as someone was trying to get back in vindication
against the encyclopedia because it was taken down at about 7 pm BST, which is
the peak time for pissed-up pub discussions that can only be settled by
conducting a Google search.
Users from several European countries and
some locations in the Middle East couldn’t access the page starting Friday
night. However, access was restored by early Saturday. An official spokesperson
from Wikipedia blamed bad actors for perpetrating a malicious attack in a blog post in which the site
explained what happened.
Wikipedia is one of the most famous sites
in the world, ranked in the top 10 by Alexa and known for providing free access
to millions of articles about numerous subjects, in the model of an online
encyclopedia that is available in several languages in the vast majority of
countries around the planet.
To be more specific, the attack affected
users in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy. Downdetector, a known
outage monitoring service reported that Wikipedia was offline for several hours
before restored over the weekend.
Another watchdog association on the
Internet, Netblocks, took notice of the DDoS attacks and reported it. Via its
Twitter account, the group stated that the offense could have been amplified by
using unsecured IoT (Internet of Things) devices.
The post explains that Wikipedia, being
one of the biggest and most prominent websites on the whole planet, sometimes
has to deal with bad faith actors that try to damage the page’s reputation. The
publication further analyzes that Wikipedia operates in an increasingly
sophisticated ecosystem in which threats and risks are constantly evolving.
The Wikimedia post also detailed that as
a result of the continuous threats, the Wikimedia communities and Wikimedia
Foundation have come up with delicate systems and well-prepared staff to
exercise monitoring and risk addressing. In the event that an issue presents
itself, the page stated that it learns, improves, and takes notes for future
occasions.
The post wasn’t very detailed or extensive, although the Twitter account of the German Wikipedia version did explain that the page was affected by a massive DDoS ( Distributed Denial of Service ) attack, at least according to the Google Translate resource.
If there was ever any doubts, Wikipedia
doesn’t like it when its page is taken down. Along that line of thought, the
post helped the site express that it condemns attacks like that and that they,
more than affecting just Wikipedia, have a consequence on millions of people’s
rights to access free information.
As of the moment of writing this article,
it isn’t clear who perpetrated the attack. However, at least one person has
claimed responsibility for it: a Twitter user who goes by the name “Ukdrillas,”
per a report from Israeli publication Haaretz.com.
The user himself detailed an alleged
timeline of his attacks on his account, and in a recent tweet, he observed that
he was just testing some new IoT devices. That account was blocked on Saturday night,
per Hareetz.com.
Imperva’s senior vice president and CTO
Terry Ray told site Information Security Media Group that the motives for these
attacks could vary, and because of that, those in charge of security need to
ask themselves what the cost for avoiding an attack is when compared to the
potential long-term damage of the company’s reputation if such an event isn’t
solved quickly.
He also said that DDoS attacks aren’t always perceived as cybersecurity issues, and that is why they are mostly successful. The cost of the media attention and business stoppage is what needs to be considered, and he concluded that Wikimedia likely determined that the cost of protection was higher than the cost of DDoS business impact.
For what is worth, the site is already up
and running after the distasteful episode occurred. When you encounter a
petition to donate a few bucks to Wikipedia, remember that it has to endure
things like that and you may deem it worthy of your money.
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