Wikileaks Active Again

An American provider of Internet domain names withdrew its service to the WikiLeaks Web site after a barrage of attacks by hackers that threatened to destabilize its entire system, according to the provider and WikiLeaks itself on Friday. But within hours, WikiLeaks said it had registered its domain name in Switzerland.

By mid-morning, attempts to access the original wikileaks.org Web site produced only a page saying: “The address is not valid.” But the new domain name, wikileaks.ch provided access to the site.

The action by EveryDNS, which provides around 500,000 Web sites, followed a decision on Wednesday by Amazon.com Inc. to expel WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing organization, from its servers, although it remains on the servers of a Swedish host, Bahnhof, as it continues to anger the United States by publicizing a huge array of some 250,000 leaked State Department documents relating to American foreign policy around the globe.

In a statement on its Web site, EveryDNS.com, the provider said it terminated WikiLeaks domain name at around 4 a.m. Central European time on Friday.

“The services were terminated for violation of the provision which states that a ‘member shall not interfere with another member’s use and enjoyment of the service or another entity’s use and enjoyment of similar services.’”

It said wikileaks.org “has become the target of multiple distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks.” Such attacks usually involve bombarding a Web site with attacks, preventing legitimate users from access and designed to make a targeted Web site unavailable.

“These attacks have, and future attacks would, threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure, which enables access to almost 500,000 other Web sites,” the statement said.

WikiLeaks, whose founder, Julian Assange, is being sought for questioning in connection to alleged sex crimes in Sweden, which he denies, said on its Twitter feed at around 5: 30 a.m.: “WikiLeaks.org domain killed by US everydns.net after claimed mass attacks.”

It implored supporters to “keep us strong” and provided a link for financial donations. Hours later, a message on the WikiLeaks Twitter feed said: “WikiLeaks moved to Switzerland” and provided the new Web address,