WikiLeaks' in 'cat and mouse' game with hackers

BANGALORE, INDIA: Cyber attacks are hunting hosts of the controversial whistle blower website WikiLeaks day and night. Their relentless attack is forcing domain name service providers to serve ties with the 'hot' website.

The site which booted with two NDS service providers, has managed to chug on to a third one now, faraway from the US.

The site was shut down on Friday by EveryDNS.net, a U.S.-based domain name provider, citing cyber attacks. But the controversial website announced hours later that it has employed a company in Switzerland and was up soon.

An announcement on the site's Twitter page, along with the URL, said, "WikiLeaks moves to Switzerland".

EveryDNS.net announced that it had to cut its relationship with WikiLeaks because the site had received multiple cyber attacks.

"EveryDNS.net provided domain name system (DNS) services to the wikileaks.org domain name until 10 p.m. ET, December 2, 2010, when such services were terminated," the U.S.-based company posted on its website.

"More specifically, the services were terminated for violation of the provision which states that the 'member shall not interfere with another Member's use and enjoyment of the service or another entity's use and enjoyment of similar services'.

The company said Wikileaks.org has become the target of multiple cyber attacks.

"These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other websites."

"WikiLeaks.org domain killed by US everydns.net after claimed mass attacks KEEP US STRONG," the company posted early Friday morning, following the 'killing' of the site.

Amazon also kicked the site off its servers earlier this week.

Media reports last week indicated that the the US government, apparently aided by freelance computer hackers, chased WikiLeaks from an American commercial computer network and temporarily stopped the leak of embarrassing diplomatic documents. But within hours, the website was back online, publishing from a fortified bunker.

The WikiLeaks site was inaccessible for several hours last week before it returned to servers owned by its previous Swedish host, Bahnhof, which are housed in a protective Cold-War era bunker. Tech blogs have compared it to a lair from a James Bond movie. Amazon's move to evict WikiLeaks from its servers came after congressional staff called the company to inquire about its relationship with WikiLeaks.