The Pirate Bay was not the only one feeling the brute force of a massive DDoS attack yesterday. WikiLeaks was also being attacked, and unlike The Pirate Bay, nobody has come forward claiming responsibility yet.

We were first alerted to the WikiLeaks takedown by the organization themselves. They tweeted out the details yesterday with two separate mirrors to their domain. One was up and running while the other was completely down.

The Pirate Bay confirmed the message as well on their Facebook page while they were under attack. They make mention of “The year of the storm” which was a blog post written back when its founding members had their appeal denied. In that post, The Pirate Bay predicts that the clash between the Internet and governments would come to a head in 2012. With the Facebook post, we can assume that the attack on The Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks is seen as the beginning of what some may call the World War Web.

The Pirate Bay 16 hours ago

Wikileaks.org is also under attack.This sure is the year of the storm…As predicted here: https://thepiratebay.se/blog/204 Powered by socialditto  264 likes · 143 comments

There is a valid reason for some people to want The Pirate Bay taken off the net. A lot of people in government feel that it threatens lives of those who are operating overseas when they release cables and other sensitive documents. WikiLeaks may have even been involved in the execution of an accused spy.

As ZDNet points out, it’s a little suspect that WikiLeaks and The Pirate Bay get attacked at the same time. It could all be coincidence, but there are enough people who want both sites gone to warrant a collective assault on these sites.

DDoS has always been the tool of attack for Anonymous and other fringe groups. It’s never really been publicly used by governments to attack Web sites they don’t like. The tables could be turning on these groups, however, if a government or other group feels like fighting fire with fire.

At this point, we just don’t know who is behind these attacks. Who knows? Maybe WikiLeaks was also taken down because of a lack of porn. Stranger things have happened.