WikiLeaks under electronic attack

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WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 (UPI) -- The WikiLeaks Web site has been disrupted by electronic hackers a second time days after posting more classified U.S. government documents, officials said.

A WikiLeaks representative posted a message on Twitter Tuesday saying "DDOS attack now exceeding 10 gigabytes a second." A denial of service attack overwhelms a Web site by requesting too many responses for a site to handle.

The origin of the latest denial of service attack was not known, but InformationWeek said there was speculation the disruption might have been orchestrated by the U.S. government or foreign governments embarrassed by hundreds of thousands of leaked U.S. diplomatic documents posted by WikiLeaks.

A hacker with the Twitter nickname "The Jester" claimed to have temporarily jammed the whistle-blower site with a denial of service attack late Sunday morning.

President Obama ordered a clampdown on U.S. security leaks before WikiLeaks posted thousands of classified Defense Department documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.