Matt Drudge wondered aloud Thursday evening whether his popular site was the object of a U.S. government cyberattack.
Via the Twitter account for his Drudge Report, he said his news-aggregation site is the victim of the “biggest DDoS since site’s inception,” referring to a Distributed Denial of Service attack.
“Is the US government attacking DRUDGE REPORT?” he asked, adding that there was “VERY suspicious routing [and timing].”
In a later tweet, Mr. Drudge said the “Attacking [was] coming from ‘thousands’ of sources. Of course none of them traceable to Fort Meade,” referring to the Maryland base that houses the headquarters of United States Cyber Command and the National Security Agency.
Mr. Drudge’s news-aggregation site was one of the highest-profile outlets to take a favorable tack on Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Earlier Thursday, President Obama announced sanctions against several Russian agencies and individuals over purported cyberattacks on Democratic Party institutions. Many liberals are blaming these actions for Hillary Clinton’s defeat at Mr. Trump’s hands.
In Thursday’s announcements, Mr. Obama also vowed unspecified countermeasures against Russia that the public would likely never learn of.
Sharyl Attkisson, an award-winning investigative reporter formerly of CBS News, connected the dots in a tweeted reply to Mr. Drudge.
“Maybe they think this is a proportional counterattack to Russia. After all they have decided @Drudge is Russian fake news, right?” she posted.
Around 8:30 p.m., when Mr. Drudge tweeted the complaint, both the mobile and desktop versions of the Drudge Report were accessible to readers using several browsers.
