Hackers target Swedish government websites

Hackers managed to break into several Swedish official websites, including the country's armed forces' portal on Monday, thereby rendering them inaccessible for hours. Reports say that a few supporters of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, claimed responsibility of it on the popular microblogging service, Twitter. Interestingly, Niklas Englund, the head of digital media at the Swedish Armed Forces noted that while it had not been ascertained as to who was behind the DDoS attacks, unidentified Assange supporters on Twitter urged Sweden to get their "hands off Assange".

Swedish government websites targeted

Early last month, there were reports about WikiLeaks being hit by another distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. Reports at the time indicated that a government entity is behind the attack. The publishing body announced on Twitter that the website and the donation page run by French organization Defense Fund Net Neutrality (FDNN) were down. At the time of writing this, the main WikiLeaks website was still down.

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The official account of WikiLeaks on Twitter published these updates:

“WikiLeaks donation page and FDNN portal down.”

“No one is directly frightened of WikiLeaks. What they’re frightened of is you seeing a successful example of independence,” said another. “What they’re frightened of is you knowing how the world works, because they’re scared of you.”

“Speculation on DDoS attack against WikiLeaks timing: 1. Olympics cover 2. Upcomng [sic] release. 3. Ongoing Syria, Stratfor releases”

Regarding the last tweet, WikiLeaks hadn’t exposed much on the 2012 Olympic Games; so it is unlikely that the attack was a result of its coverage of the event. However, Robyn Jackson, a supporter of WikiLeaks tweeted that the Olympics reference wasn't related to WikiLeaks activities, “Whilst attention of the world is on [mainstream media] Olympic games coverage, WikiLeaks’ ability to get donations crippled”.

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