The controversial international whistleblower website WikiLeaks has been suffering large scale Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks as it releases controversial leaks pertaining to American military and embassy communications around the world.

A DDoS attack involves attacking a web server so as to make the website or application it provides inaccessible. This is usually done by directing a large amount of traffic towards it, such that the server becomes saturated and unable to respond to legitimate web requests.

WikiLeaks has posted on it’s social networking profile on Twitter that the “DDOS attack [is] now exceeding 10 Gigabits a second.” A hacker called ‘the Jester’ has claimed responsibility for a previous attack on Sunday, though it is doubtful that these large scale attacks are the work of one person. There is also a strong possibility that governmental forces are at work in the background. This comes to light as the UK and US make defences against ‘cyber warfare’ a high priority.

Areatrade work hard to ensure that the servers holding your website are secure against such attacks and from vulnerabilities. What do you think about the changing face of the web and the growing importance of cyber security? Let us know in the comments below.

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