Amazon Outage Due to Hardware, Not Hackers

By

Amazon is reassuring visitors that it hasn’t become the latest casualty of pro-WikiLeaks supporters. Despite being offline for about half an hour in Britain, France, Germany and other countries, the Internet retailer says that hardware – not hacktivists – are behind the technical glitch.

"The brief interruption to our European retail sites earlier today was due to hardware failure in our European datacenter network and not the result of a DDOS attempt," a spokeswoman for Amazon told Reuters.

Of course, Amazon would be a likely target for the hackers who have launched attacks on companies such as Visa, MasterCard and PayPal. In early December, Amazon opted to ensure its servers would be no longer available to host the WikiLeaks site, forcing the controversial organization to move back to a Swedish provider. The site was down for several hours and was dumped from Amazon’s servers in the wake of criticism from congressional staffers.

In late November, WikiLeaks published 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February this year, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified Secret.

According to an Associated Press report last week, a British judge jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, “ordering the leader of secret-spilling website behind bars as his organization's finances came under increasing pressure.”

The report said that “Assange showed no reaction as Judge Howard Riddle denied him bail in an extradition case that could see him sent to Sweden to face allegations of rape, molestation and unlawful coercion.”

Prior to Assange’s hearing, Kristinn Hrafnsson, a spokesperson for Assange, told the Associated Press, “This will not change our operation.” WikiLeaks, in fact, released a cache of a dozen new diplomatic cables, its first publication in more than 24 hours, the AP said.




Edited by Tammy Wolf
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. [Free eNews Subscription]

TechZone360 Contributing Editor

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Related Articles

Can Science Outsmart Deepfake Deceivers? Klick Labs Proposes an Emerging Solution

By: Alex Passett    3/25/2024

Researchers at Klick Labs were able to identify audio deepfakes from authentic audio recordings via new vocal biomarker technology (alongside AI model…

Read More

Top 5 Best Ways to Integrate Technology for Successful Project-Based Learning

By: Contributing Writer    3/19/2024

Project-based learning, also popularly known as the PBL curriculum, emphasizes using and integrating technology with classroom teaching. This approach…

Read More

How to Protect Your Website From LDAP Injection Attacks

By: Contributing Writer    3/12/2024

Prevent LDAP injection attacks with regular testing, limiting access privileges, sanitizing user input, and applying the proper encoding functions.

Read More

Azure Cost Optimization: 5 Things You Can Do to Save on Azure

By: Contributing Writer    3/7/2024

Azure cost optimization is the process of managing and reducing the overall cost of using Azure. It involves understanding the resources you're using,…

Read More

Massive Meta Apps and Services Outage Impacts Users Worldwide

By: Alex Passett    3/5/2024

Meta's suite of apps and services are experiencing major global outages on Super Tuesday 2024.

Read More