Worldometers site is being attacked - why???

[Panicattacka]

Like many HAers, I often look at the worldometers site. I find it actually reassuring in a strange way. Anyway, I've just looked there and saw this message at the top of their coronavirus page:

We apologize for the temporary disservice that you may have experienced. For about 20 minutes, our site showed clearly incorrect data due to a malicious act. We have investigated the issue and we're now implementing protective measures to prevent this from happening again. The other day we got hit with a big DDoS attack. Now this. We'll continue with our daily efforts and we'll not give up.

Who on earth would do this and why? I'm at a loss to explain how wicked you have to be to attack a site like this and for what purpose? Is it just warped teens getting sick kicks, or is it something more sinister like a state-level attack? Whose interest is served by attacking this site?

[jray23]

The Johns Hopkins site which has also been referenced by media often was attacked the other day too.

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[PanickyGuy]

Like many HAers, I often look at the worldometers site. I find it actually reassuring in a strange way. Anyway, I've just looked there and saw this message at the top of their coronavirus page:

What you typed in the above (bold), is probably one reason. Can't have some site with actual facts subduing the level of panic. In their twisted demented mines there must be panic, chaos, anarchy!

Who on earth would do this and why? I'm at a loss to explain how wicked you have to be to attack a site like this and for what purpose? Is it just warped teens getting sick kicks, or is it something more sinister like a state-level attack? Whose interest is served by attacking this site?

I can think of one or two government lackys from a few countries, that have hacked into websites in the past, just to stir things up and confuse people. One country has been spamming the hell out of this website recently with multiple spams in the Health Anxiety forum.

[MyNameIsTerry]

It's what they do because they are idiots?

[Panicattacka]

If it's just kids they need tracking down and punishing. If it's state-level actors, those states need identifying and called out on their actions. It adds to the weirdness of this whole situation, as if we are all being "played" in some way to advance some kind of agenda.

[Lencoboy]

It just seems that a small minority of sad cases the world over are simply hell-bent on exploiting this situation by trying to cause as much chaos and madness as they can.

Probably people with a similar kind of mentality who get kicks out of vandalism, random physical assault, inciting riots and even terrorist attacks, etc.

They should just grow up and get themselves an education, and a life!!

[TheGroundhog]

In early January (which seems a million years ago now) for a while you could only get official daily figures from a Chinese website. Several times people copyied and doctored the code of the website in order to hugely inflate the numbers, and acuse the Chinese gov of lying - by suggesting the website had briefly shown the 'real' numbers and they had been looking at exactly the right time to take a screenshot.

There are a lot of bored people in the world with access to a computer and a desire to stir things.

[Lencoboy]

In early January (which seems a million years ago now) for a while you could only get official daily figures from a Chinese website. Several times people copyied and doctored the code of the website in order to hugely inflate the numbers, and acuse the Chinese gov of lying - by suggesting the website had briefly shown the 'real' numbers and they had been looking at exactly the right time to take a screenshot.

There are a lot of bored people in the world with access to a computer and a desire to stir things.

Crazy, crazy people, bordering on nutjob mentality!!

[WiredIncorrectly]

I was looking for updated data for the coronavirus so I could use it to display live stats on my own site. I couldn't find any source that was updated real time. The John Hopkins data was inconsistent with the data being presented in the media. The data in the media was coming from worldometers. I don't know where worldometers get their data, or even if it's reliable.

I searched high and low and the only sources I found were: https://data.humdata.org/dataset/nov...019-ncov-cases (john hopkins data), https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-source-data and https://www.who.int/docs/default-sou...3-covid-19.pdf

As for the hackers ... kids pissing about no doubt. Those hackers are like vandals who put superglue in your locks.

[WiredIncorrectly]

As for editing numbers, it's easy. Right click on this text, press the inspect button. On the right hand side you'll see HTML code of the site, but you should see this text highlighted in the code. Now change it. Close the inspect window. Take screenshot.

LSpN8sn.png