Popular online reference website Wikipedia went down in several countries after the website was targeted by what it described as a “malicious attack”.
A “massive” Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack was committed on the server of the Wikimedia Foundation, the German account of the organisation, said in a tweet on Friday.
The Wikimedia Foundation stated in a distinct declaration that an attack was on the encyclopaedia — one of the most famous websites in the world— and that teams were working to restore access.
DDoS attacks often require legions of Zombie computers— virus-infected machines that are ordered to visit a website concurrently.
Such huge demand on the website can overwhelm computer servers, slow or knock them offline.
Wikimedia condemned a violation of its server, threatening to “free access by everybody and sharing data.” Other famous Internet sites like Twitter, Facebook and Google have been hit by a similar cyber attack in latest years.
Credit: Securityweek
