Popular information resource website Wikipedia suffered a malicious DDoS attack over the weekend, following which, it went down for a number of hours.
Wikipedia Suffered DDoS Attack
During September 6, 2019, and September 7, 2019, the popular online information platform Wikipedia suffered a huge DDoS attack. Following this distributed denial of service attack, the website went down globally for several hours.
The news about the hack first surfaced online officially via Wikipedia Twitter account.
Wikipedia has been experiencing intermittent outages today as a result of a malicious attack. We're continuing to work on restoring access. #wikipediadown
— Wikipedia (@Wikipedia) September 7, 2019
While it didn’t contain much information, Wikimedia Deutschland revealed details on Twitter. As disclosed, the Wikimedia servers suffered a huge DDoS attack that also affected the Wikipedia site.
Die Wikimedia-Server der @Wikimedia Foundation, auf denen auch Wikipedia gehostet wird, werden gerade durch einen massiven und sehr breit angelegten DDoS-Angriff lahm gelegt. #Wikipedia und ihre Schwesterprojekte sind daher vorübergehend nicht erreichbar. Sorry! https://t.co/fAemzOGhfm
— WikimediaDeutschland (@WikimediaDE) September 6, 2019
Later on, in a dedicated post by the Wikimedia Foundation, they explained that the site went offline following the attack in several regions.
“Today, Wikipedia was hit with a malicious attack that has taken it offline in several countries for intermittent periods.”
According to NetBlocks report, the attack happened in two phases, consequently impacting numerous locations with a near-total outage in the US.
Data indicate that the attack was initially staged in two phases, with the first briefly causing high latencies in the Americas from 6:00 p.m. UTC, and the second resulting in more severe outages across Western, Central and Eastern Europe, with disruptions also affecting the Middle East and South Asia.
Wikipedia Restored After 9 Hours
At the time of disclosure of the attack by Wikimedia Foundation, they confirmed that the attack was on-going. And that they were working for restoration.
The attack is ongoing and our Site Reliability Engineering team is working hard to stop it and restore access to the site.
It turns out that the website recovered after 9 hours of an outage.
Update: Wikipedia is back online as of 02:40 UTC; a #DDoS attack variously targeting @Wikimedia infrastructure in the US and Europe has now caused ~9 hours of intermittent global outages #WikipediaDown ??
? https://t.co/OyuN6MwxIH pic.twitter.com/Lnq2DkYr6h
— NetBlocks.org (@netblocks) September 7, 2019
For now, the problem seems resolved as the site is now back online. Wikipedia has condemned such attacks deeming them a threat to “everyone’s fundamental rights” to access information.
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