An activist’s website intended to expose the private data of US immigration officials was recently targeted by a significant cyberattack. The site's founder suggests the digital assault may have been launched from Russia following a surge of suspicious traffic.
Dominick Skinner, an immigration activist operating out of the Netherlands, reported that his platform known as ICE List was hit by a cyberattack shortly after news broke regarding his plans to leak sensitive data. Skinner had intended to publish personal details concerning thousands of employees from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. He claimed this information was provided to him by an anonymous whistleblower.
The disruption was identified as a distributed denial of service attack. This specific type of digital interference occurs when a system is overwhelmed by a massive volume of fake traffic, effectively blocking legitimate users from accessing the site. By flooding the server with an excessive number of requests, the attackers managed to knock the website offline.
According to Skinner, the intensity of the attack became apparent when a vast number of unique internet addresses began trying to access his servers simultaneously. After reviewing the traffic logs, he noted that a significant portion of these connections appeared to be linked to Russian sources. This observation led him to conclude that the interference was likely a coordinated effort stemming from that region.
Despite the geographic patterns in the data, Skinner admitted that pinpointing the exact culprits is difficult because the attackers utilized proxies. By routing their traffic through these intermediate servers, the perpetrators were able to mask their true identities and locations. He noted that the complexity and duration of the event indicated a high level of technical skill.
The activist remains convinced that the timing of the event was not coincidental and was specifically designed to prevent the data leak. He characterized the incident as a sophisticated attempt to silence the platform. While the website faced significant downtime, the event has drawn further attention to the ongoing tensions surrounding the release of government employee information.
Source: Website Leaking ICE Agents Data Goes Offline After Claimed Russian Cyberattack