On Tuesday, the site tweeted that it was under DDoS attack. Then, on Thursday, the site tweeted, “Pastebin is under DDoS attack again guys, working on it.” The site was back up on Friday with no explanation about what had happened.
Pastebin was developed for programmers to store pieces of source code or configuration information, “but anyone is more than welcome to paste any type of text”, the site said on its webpage. “The idea behind the site is to make it more convenient for people to share large amounts of text online”, it added.
Pastebin has been used by Anonymous and its spinoffs, such as LulzSec, to post controversial documents and “manifestos” about their activities. It was also used by the Comodohacker to detail his exploits in compromising certificate authorities, such as the Comodo affiliates and DigiNotar.
Comodohacker also announced on Pastebin that it had attacked Belgian certificate authority GlobalSign, which prompted the company to halt new certificate issues for a week in September. The company resumed issuing certificates after concluding that Comodohacker had not compromised its certificate-issuance infrastructure. This initial assessment was confirmed by a more detailed report issued last month.