WikiLeaks and the Pirate Bay suffered denial-of-service attacks this week that brought both websites down.

WikiLeaks suffered the more intense attack. The whistle-blower site tweeted Wednesday that it had been getting attacked for the last three days.

The site was down for some time, and the organization actually had to put up a mirror site for its users. It was back and seemed to be operating normally by Thursday. No person or organization has been identified as the culprit behind the attack.

The Pirate Bay also suffered a DDoS attack, which is when a hacker or hackers use a series of computers under their control to flood a website with so much traffic that it can no longer function properly.


The file-sharing website was down for most of Wednesday, but was also back and working again Thursday, according to its Facebook account.

The Pirate Bay said Anonymous, which often conducts these kinds of attacks but typically sticks to corporate or government websites, was definitely not its attacker. And instead, a Twitter user with the handle “AnonNyre” took credit for the attack.

The user posted a message on the website PasteBin and said he or she conducted the attack because he or she opposes Anonymous and said Pirate Bay functioned as a “press-release website” for the organization. The user’s Twitter description includes the line: “I am Anonymous, but no longer support Anonymous.”

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