On Friday, Wikipedia went down in several countries after the website was hit with a malicious attack. The incident primarily affected European and Middle East users at around 7:00 p.m. BST (11 a.m. PDT), as can be observed from thousands of reports that flooded the website downdetector.com at that time.
The Wikimedia Foundation"s German account on Twitter stated that the website had been affected by a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack, a fact that has now confirmed through a blog post by the non-profit organization as well (via TechCrunch). For those unaware, a DDOS attack entails the flooding of a targeted server with an overwhelming amount of traffic, disrupting the availability of its services to the intended users.
Although the attack was noted to be ongoing when the statement was posted, it looks like normal services resumed in many countries a few hours ago, according to users from various countries. However, it does seem like the incident is still being investigated, as complete eradication of the issue hasn"t been officially confirmed yet.
Wikimedia described the incident and its stance on such attacks in the following way:
"As one of the world’s most popular sites, Wikipedia sometimes attracts “bad faith” actors. Along with the rest of the web, we operate in an increasingly sophisticated and complex environment where threats are continuously evolving. Because of this, the Wikimedia communities and Wikimedia Foundation have created dedicated systems and staff to regularly monitor and address risks. If a problem occurs, we learn, we improve, and we prepare to be better for next time.
We condemn these sorts of attacks. They’re not just about taking Wikipedia offline. Takedown attacks threaten everyone’s fundamental rights to freely access and share information. We in the Wikimedia movement and Foundation are committed to protecting these rights for everyone."
You can visit the website to check if it is working alright for you. In any case, we"ll keep you posted on any updates regarding the matter as soon as they become available.