Just hours after President Obama unveiled his sanctions against Russia for "meddling in the US election," one of the largest alternative aggregators, Drudge Report, suffered the "biggest DDOS attack since the site's inception" according to founder Matt Drudge, who noted "suspicious routing and timing" of the attack.
Is the US government attacking DRUDGE REPORT?
Biggest DDoS since site's inception. VERY suspicious routing [and timing].
— MATT DRUDGE (@DRUDGE) December 30, 2016
The site was down briefly at around 7pmET and the attack lasted 90 minutes according to IBTimes. When the attack began, the top headline read: "MOSCOW MOCKS OBAMA 'LAME DUCK'"
Government officials have wrangled with Drudge before over his alleged false claims.
With 2 million daily unique visitors and around 700 million monthly page views, DrudgeReport.com was the top site for referral traffic in 2014 to the Daily Mail, CNN, Fox News, Roll Call, Breitbart, The New York Times, USA Today, Associated Press and other news sites.
Its readers were loyal, staying on the site for an average of 30 minutes, Politico reported.
One can't help but wonder, as the 'fake news' narrative loses traction, is the government shifting to direct (anonymous) censorship, as proposed earlier on Friday by the head of Italy's "competition" regulator. There have also been reports that Russian state-run network RT was unavailable on various occasions during the day.