Update on Wikimedia site and system outages

Hello everyone,

By now you are likely aware that the Wikimedia sites suffered from a relatively significant botnet driven DDOS attack on September 6th, taking them offline in several countries throughout the day. This primarily affected Wikipedia access in Europe and the Middle East. We posted a short update of the event on our website.[1]

I would like to thank everyone who stepped up to support the restoration of our projects,  including the fast reporting of community members throughout the world and our security and engineering teams who worked long hours to address many complex issues surrounding the attack and our response—the Site Reliability Engineering team in particular. 

The Wikimedia Foundation leadership team is proud to work with such talented and dedicated staff and supporters.

Yours,

Heather

[1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2019/09/07/malicious-attack-on-wikipedia-what-we-know-and-what-were-doing/

“Today, Wikipedia was hit with a malicious attack that has taken it offline in several countries for intermittent periods. The attack is ongoing and our Site Reliability Engineering team is working hard to stop it and restore access to the site.

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.

Right now, we’re continuing to work to restore access wherever you might be reading Wikipedia in the world. We’ll keep you posted.”

Originally posted by Heather Walls to Wikimedia-l on 7 September, 2019.