Wikipedia is one of the biggest storehouses of human knowledge on the planet and also the seventh most popular website in the world with more than a billion devices accessing it every month. Wikipedia has also just been strike by a “DDoS attack” that took it offline across many countries. Here’s what is identified so far.
Wikipedia down
Wikipedia has confirmed that it was strike by a “DDoS attack that has taken it offline in several countries”. In a statement, a Wikimedia Foundation representative said, “The attack is enduring and our Site dependability Engineering team is working hard to stop it and restore access to the site.”
Wikipedia has been experiencing intermittent outages today as a result of a malicious attack. We’re continuing to work on restoring access. #wikipediadown
— Wikipedia (@Wikipedia) September 7, 2019
The attack appears to have started shortly on September 7, with the France, U.K., Germany, Italy, Poland, Netherlands and parts of the Middle East.
The official Twitter account for Wikipedia in Germany tweeted that Wikimedia server hosts Wikipedia by a massive and broad DDoS attack.”
What is a DDoS attack?
A Distributed Denial of Service attack persists when a server receives more access requests, in various forms and shapes, than it can handle. This disrupts the normal functioning of the server and can also result in a slowdown of performance, and in that server is unable to work at all. These attacks are often carried out by botnets-for-hire. DDoS-as-a-Service platforms hire out the resource power of compromise devices that together send those access requests to overwhelm the targeted server.
Wikipedia goes offline following the DDoS attack
The official statement from the Wikimedia Foundation behind Wikipedia:
“Today, Wikipedia was strike with a malicious attack that has taken it offline in several countries for irregular periods. The attack is ongoing and our Site Reliability Engineering team is working hard to restore access to the website.
As one of the world’s most popular website, Wikipedia sometimes attracts bad-faith actors. Along with the rest of the web, we work in an increasingly complex and complicated environment where malware and threats are continuously evolving. Because of this, the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia communities have created a dedicated staff to regularly monitor and address risks. If an issue occurs, we improve, we learn, and also we prepare to be better for next time.
We criticize these sorts of attacks. They’re not just about taking Wikipedia offline. Takedown the attacks threaten everyone’s fundamental rights to share information and free access. We in the Wikimedia Foundation and movement are committed to protecting these rights for everyone.
Image credit: Forbes
