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WordPress Under Attack
March 5, 2011
WordPress experienced two Distributed Denial of Service attacks, but it's unclear why.
BY KELSEY WAANANEN
ANCHOR ANA COMPAIN-ROMERO
You're watching multisource tech video news analysis from Newsy
Your access to WordPress has been denied. At least that’s what happened to some users on Thursday when WordPress experienced the largest Distributed Denial of Service attack it has ever seen in its six-year blog-hosting history. This attack was followed by another Friday morning.
As to how large the WordPress empire is, their stats page shows they host nearly 18 million sites.
A full list of the affected sites hasn’t been made public yet --
-- but Forbes explains -- we’re not just talking about mom and pop blogs. Among Wordpress’ higher-profile users...
...The New York Times’ directory of blogs, CNN’s Political Ticker, Fox News’ GretaWire, and
Dow Jones’ Wall Street Journal blogs...
A blogger for The Stir says this kind of attack has serious implications.
“By carrying out this attack, someone somewhere put a legitimate stumbling block in the flow of free information yesterday. The issue has been resolved, but it's bound to happen again. Scary stuff, really.”
WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg told TechCrunch all three of its data centers were affected - and these attacks most likely had a political motivation.
And The Blog Herald makes that accusation more specific.
“The recent unrest in the Middle East has led to a greater use of Blogging to inform the world and fellow protesters of the various revolutions taking place. Pro-Government supporters could have targeted non-english Blogs in their DDOS attack in an effort to silence them.”
TechCrunch, which was affected by the attack, has a different idea of who’s to blame.
“WordPress did not mention the origin of the attack (DDoS =! Anonymous)...”
They’re referring to the group who’s pledged alliance to Julian Assange and Wikileaks. The group has been behind several DDoS attacks -- including those against PayPal and MasterCard.
A blogger for ZDNet, like many other media sources, is puzzled by the apparent lack of motivation for the attacks.
“Color me confused. I don’t know why anyone would attack WordPress, the popular home of almost 18-million blogs, but they did ... Unlike other recent DDoS attacks, … there’s seems to be no reason for this attack. Internet groups ... which [have] been known to conduct DDoS attacks, have not been connected with this latest assault.”
As of Friday afternoon, no one has admitted involvement in the attacks.
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