Wikileaks is reportedly down worldwide as DNS services pulled

UPDATE: Wikileaks is live again, details here.

Wikileaks is reportedly down worldwide after its DNS provider EveryDNS.net stopped providing DNS support to the controversial website after giving a 24 hour termination notice.

UPDATE: All indications are that as of 11:25 PM PST Wikileaks.org is indeed down worldwide, though we were able to reach its servers via its IP address (not that that really helps the general public much of course) – so the site seems to be functioning fine other than it has no DNS to route people to it.

Wikileaks apparently confirmed this within the last hour in a tweet, saying, “WikiLeaks,org domain killed by US everydns.net after claimed mass attacks”.

Skeptic Geek found the statement below that was issued by EveryDNS (and is on its homepage right now). In response to the DDoS attacks on Wikileaks, EveryDNS states that it couldn’t cope with strain on its systems in order to offer services to the other half a million sites that it serves. It states that the EveryDNS notified the email associated with the wikileaks.org account as well as what pinging the secretive organization on Twitter (but since the Twitter account is probably getting thousands of ‘@’s a day, that was probably only a token gesture, though of course, we kind of doubt that Wikileaks is reachable by phone, though the service provider did try the chat function on Wikileaks apparently…). Here’s the statement:

EveryDNS.net provided domain name system (DNS) services to the wikileaks.org domain name until 10PM EST, December 2, 2010, when such services were terminated. As with other users of the EveryDNS.net network, this service was provided for free. The termination of services was effected pursuant to, and in accordance with, the EveryDNS.net Acceptable Use Policy.

More specifically, the services were terminated for violation of the provision which states that “Member shall not interfere with another Member’s use and enjoyment of the Service or another entity’s use and enjoyment of similar services.” The interference at issues arises from the fact that wikileaks.org has become the target of multiple distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks. These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites.

Thus, last night, at approximately 10PM EST, December 1, 2010 a 24 hour termination notification email was sent to the email address associated with the wikileaks.org account. In addition to this email, notices were sent to Wikileaks via Twitter and the chat function available through the wikileaks.org website. Any downtime of the wikileaks.org website has resulted from its failure to use another hosted DNS service provider.

So according to that statement, EveryDNS is saying that it gave Wikileaks the opportunity to find a new DNS provider but that Wikileaks failed to do so.

Of course, this news comes soon after Amazon decided – on its own according to a statement it released today – to cease to do business with Wikileaks on its Amazon Web Services.

Of course, moving to another DNS provider shouldn’t be too problematic for Wikileaks – however, perhaps sticking with one if these DDoS attacks continue may be.

Well, at least Wikileaks has its Cold War era bunker still – for now at least.