The arrest of Wikileaks founder and dissident Julian Assange has precipitated a deluge of cyber attacks according to the Ecuadorian government.
Ecuador's Telecommunications Vice Minister Patricio Real confirmed the startling rise in cyber attacks on Monday, saying the government has fielded 40 million per day since Assange's arrest on Thursday, according to Reuters.
The influx of attempted hacks has propelled Ecuador from 51st place in terms of volume of cyber attacks worldwide to 31st, said Real.
Targets have been public websites in Ecuador that include those of the country's presidency, central bank foreign ministry, and more, with the goal of functionally shutting websites down through what is known as a distributed denial of service, DDoS, attack.
A DDoS style hack entails inundating and shutting down servers through coordinating a large number of automated requests -- collectively the requests are large enough to bring the targeted servers to a grinding halt.
No data was stolen or destroyed by recent hacking efforts, said a Reuters report, but according to Real, the results have made it more difficult for government employees and citizens to access public websites.
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It's unclear what group or groups launched is behind the torrent of hacks, but the hacking collective, Anonymous, had previously made threats, according to Real.
After seven years of hiding away in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, to avoid sexual assault allegations and extradition to Sweden, Assange was arrested by U.K. authorities this month on charges of hacking the U.S. government.
Specifically, the charges allege, while cooperating with former U.S. Army soldier turned whistle blower, Chelsea Manning, Assange conspired to break into a U.S. Department of Defense computer network. That attempt failed, say the charges, but the documents were eventually released anyway.
Among the information released by Wikileaks as a result of the leak was a video that showed military personnel gunning down a dozen people, including two Reuters journalists.
Assange now faces possible extradition to the U.S. where whistle blowers have been the subject of some of the harshest ever sentences ever in recent years.
Currently, Assange does not face any charges of Espionage which in its harshest application can result in the death penalty.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
