Assange granted bail as government sites brace for DDoS attacks

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has finally been granted bail by an English judge, as various reports reveal government sites have been told to brace themselves for possible distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks from his supporters in the Anonymous web group.

Assange was granted bail earlier today, with his supporters putting up £200,000 as security, although he remains in jail while Swedish prosecutors decide whether to appeal against the decision.

The Australian founder of the notorious whistle-blowing web site is accused of sexually assaulting two women in Sweden.

Earlier, reports suggested national security adviser Peter Ricketts had warned government sites that they could be the latest victims of the Operation Payback DDoS attacks launched by Anonymous against organisations that it believes have deliberately tried to “impair WIkiLeaks’ ability to function”.

Swedish government web sites have already been hit by DDoS attacks, and Ricketts apparently counseled the heads of government departments on how to avoid similar attacks, according to The Telegraph.

The sites of the Department for Work and Pensions and HMRC are said to be particularly at risk.

Rob Cotton, chief executive of information assurance group NCC Group, said such sites must assess and upgrade their load capacity if they want to avoid potentially damaging downtime.

“DDoS attacks are very simple to execute but incredibly difficult to combat. No amount of firewalls or software can resist them. Large web site load capacity is key in combating this threat,” he said.

“We would advise organisations with any previous links to WikiLeaks to stringently load test their sites to ensure that they will not crash under heavy loads brought about by DDoS attacks.”