Anti-WikiLeaks hacker group attacks RT.com as Manning trial begins

international | rights, freedoms and repression | other press Tuesday June 04, 2013 12:34 by Turing

Now the US mercenaries try to silence rt.com. Full text at link.

RT.com was temporarily disabled Monday for just under five hours by a DDoS attack. It coincided with RT's reporting on the trial of Bradley Manning and massive anti-government protests in Turkey, with coverage continuing uninterrupted on Twitter. The attack, claimed by anti-WikiLeaks hacker group AntiLeaks, also came as RT celebrated its status as the first international news agency to reach one billion views on YouTube.

“Yes we are responsible for the attack on #RT_com,” read a tweet from AntiLeaks Monday. The same hackers previously used a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack in August of 2012 during the debut episode of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s show on RT.

Hackers often use DDoS attacks to disable websites by fabricating Internet traffic and overwhelming a site's hosting service, which is what happened in this case.

“This is a continuation of our protest against RT.com for their support of the traitor Bradly Manning and cyber terrorist Julian Assange who I need to remind your viewers once threatened to release a ‘thermonuclear device’ of government files containing the names of spies, sources, and informants if he’s killed or brought to trial,” AntiLeaks wrote in an email to journalist Michael Rusch.

Monday’s leak coincides with the first day of the Bradley Manning trial, with the AntiLeaks spokesman referring to Manning, who risked his life to reveal atrocities carried out by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a “coward.” AntiLeaks has previously described Assange as “a new breed of terrorist” and warned him Monday that “you will see your final days here in America.”

This attack however, like the one last year, did not impede RT's ongoing coverage of the Manning trial or the protests in Turkey.