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Saturday 04 December 2010

Wikileaks

WikiLeaks website disconnected as US company withdraws support

The WikiLeaks.org web address is no longer functioning after an American internet company pulled the plug on the site.

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, has been added to Interpol's 'Wanted' list over alleged sex crimes in Sweden.
Julian Assange is wanted by Interpol Photo: AP

While still accessible by typing in the domain number, people trying to access the site by typing WikiLeaks into a search engine or their browser will not be successful.

The US-based provider, EveryDNS.net, took the controversial site offline earlier today, claiming that the constant hacking attacks were so powerful that they were damaging its other customers.

It said it had become the "target of multiple distributed denial of service attacks" which threatened the stability of its structure.

The California-based company’s terms and conditions state that “members shall not interfere with another member’s use and enjoyment of the service”.

It hosts more than 500,000 sites around the world.

WikiLeaks confirmed the drop on its Twitter account, saying: “WikiLeaks.org domain killed by US everydns.net after claimed mass attacks.”

It was given 24 hours notice of the termination.

The site had been consistently attacked after exposing hundreds of thousands of classified US state documents.

Host servers have come under huge pressure by the US government to close it down.

But it is still available by typing in the IP address, which WikiLeaks has tweeted and which was immediately circulated by hundreds of users of the social networking site.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the development was an example of the “privatisation of state censorship” in the US and is a “serious problem”.

“These attacks will not stop our mission, but should be setting off alarm bells about the rule of law in the United States,” he warned, according to the Guardian.

WikiLeaks has released a file that it dubbed its “insurance policy”. The file is encrypted with a code that is so strong it is deemed impossible to break.

It is said to be planning to release a key that unlocks the files if anything happens to the site or its founder, Julian Assange.

The latest move follows Amazon’s decision to drop WikiLeaks from its servers following political pressure.

The company was originally hosting the site and giving it memory to share its database.

Its decision to drop the site earlier this week was praised by US Senator Joe Lieberman, who said it should “set the standard” for companies being used to distribute “illegally seized material”.

The site remains on the servers of a Swedish host, Bahnhof.

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