Has WikiLeaks landed in cyberattack crosshairs? (Declan McCullagh)

Oct. 27, 2010 (CNET News) -- Forget China or Al Qaeda. In a twist that would have been inconceivable even a few months ago, the WikiLeaks.org Web site is being proposed as the first public target for a U.S. government cyberattack.

After the shadowy, document-leaking organization distributed nearly 400,000 classified documents from the Iraq war on Friday, Washington officialdom responded with a torrent of denunciations alleging violations of national security and endangering U.S. military operations.

In a rare point of congruence, The Washington Post and The Washington Times both criticized the release, with the smaller paper arguing that WikiLeaks' offshore Web site should be attacked and rendered "inoperable" by the U.S. government. Some hawkish conservatives followed suit, including Christian Whiton, a State Department adviser under President George W. Bush, who wrote a column calling on the U.S. military to "electronically assault WikiLeaks and any telecommunications company offering its services to this organization."

Their target's actually not that far away. WikiLeaks' Web site is now hosted on Amazon.com servers on United States soil near San Jose, Calif.

Read more: CNET News