10. Whistleblower WikiLeaks Attacked
Whistleblower site WikiLeaks made news this year as perpetrator and victim. The site published in August another batch of U.S. diplomatic cables that came from a comprehensive cache of 250,000 State Department documents. The site released the first batch in November 2010.
Within days after the August release of 134,000 cables, WikiLeaks was struck by a denial-of-service attack, apparently in retaliation. About 170 cables named U.S. diplomats whose identities were protected, including a United Nations official in West Africa and a foreign human rights activist working in Cambodia. The release-attack scenario was similar to what happened in 2010, when a hacker calling himself The Jester took credit for shutting down the site. The perpetrators of this year's attack are not known.
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