The massive cyber attack that knocked offline Amazon, Reddit and Netflix, amongst hundreds of other websites, in the past 24 hours has been claimed by the whistleblowing group WikiLeaks.​

The Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack came in three waves and left millions of users, mostly in the US and Europe, unable to access many popular websites.

Cyber security experts and US government officials have yet to pinpoint the source, but on Saturday morning, Sydney-time, WikiLeaks tweeted: "Mr. Assange is still alive and WikiLeaks is still publishing. We ask supporters to stop taking down the US internet. You proved your point."

Half an hour later it sent another tweet: "The Obama administration should not have attempted to misuse its instruments of state to stop criticism of its ruling party candidate."