WikiLeaks, which published a quarter-million sensitive diplomatic cables on Sunday, came under a denial of service attack by a hacker styled “th3j35t3r” (The Jester).

When the attack happened, th3j35t3r tweeted, “TANGO DOWN – for attempting to endanger the lives of our troops, ‘other assets’ & foreign relations.”

According to PCMAG.com, F-Secure’s Chief Research Officer, Mikko Hypponen said, “It was a weird case. Everybody assumed it was some large-scale Distributed Denial of Service attack, but the guy himself says it’s not. It’s a protocol-based attack from a single source.”

WikiLeaks recovered by changing its hosting providers, which were in France when the attack happened. They are currently using two different servers hosted by Amazon.com.

The hacker, th3j35t3r, characterizes himself as ex-military and often uses military terms. He uses a Russian Hotmail account.

About The Author

Eiko Watanabe is a Blast staff writer in New York

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