Since Julian Assange's arrest and removal from London's Ecuadorian embassy last week, the websites of Ecuador's public institutions have been subjected to roughly 40 million cyberattacks, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday.
The attacks have primarily originated from the U.S., Brazil, Ecuador itself, and European nations including the Netherlands, Germany, Romania, France, Austria and the UK, said Patricio Real, Ecuador's deputy minister for information and communication technologies, according to the report.
Javier Jara, undersecretary of the electronic government department of the telecommunications ministry, reportedly said Ecuadorian institutions such as its foreign ministry, central bank, president's office, internal revenue service, ministries and universities suffered volumetric DDoS attacks that disrupted internet access, following "threats from those groups linked to Julian Assange."
After taking refuge in the embassy for roughly seven years, the WikiLeaks founder was forcibly expelled by the UK's special police on April 11 and subsequently arrested on behalf of the U.S. on conspiracy to conduct computer intrusion on the United States, according to an unsealed indictment.
