By Shane Curtis
WikiLeaks’ whistleblowing website suffered an
attack from the group known as OurMine on Thursday, when Julian Assange’s
data-leaking site found itself on the receiving end of a ‘hack’.
The incident took the form of a defacement of
WikiLeaks.org and meant that visitors to the site were redirected (using a
technique known as DNS poisoning) to a page created by OurMine with a messages
that said: “Hi, it’s OurMine (Security Group), don’t worry we are just testing
your…. blablablab, oh wait, this is not a security test! Wikileaks, remember
when you challenged us to hack you?”
The group, who have been in the spotlight recently,
said they were responding to a challenge from WikiLeaks asking them to attempt
to hack them.
For a short-lived period on Thursday morning, they
attacked the DNS servers, so that browsers showed the WikiLeaks homepage as
controlled by OurMine.
Not content with directing their message to
WikiLeaks, they also addressed the hacktivist group, Anonymous: “Anonymous,
remember when you tried to dox us with fake information for attacking wikileaks
[sic]?”, the message stated. “There we go! One group beat you all!
#WikileaksHack lets get it trending on twitter [sic]!”
Despite the defacement action it remains unlikely
that the WikiLeaks servers were compromised by OurMine.
The group has been in the spotlight recently
following attacks on the official social media accounts of HBO, Sony PlayStation and football giants, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona.
As of yet there is no evidence that the group stole
any important personal data or caused any lasting damage – apart from the
embarrassment of the companies impacted.
The high-profile attacks have raised considerable
attention for the group though and have followed a template of using previously
used passwords that came to light following data breaches.
This is usually followed with what appears to be a
sales pitch pointing out that the security of the site that they took control
of is subpar and to contact them if they want to upgrade.
WikiLeaks has not released any official statement
regarding the incident with OurMine.