Visa, Mastercard websites attacked, Palin targeted
SOURCE:
WASHINGTON (AFP) - – The websites of credit card giants Visa and Mastercard were knocked offline Wednesday by WikiLeaks supporters, who also took aim at US conservative standard bearer Sarah Palin and a US senator.
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SOURCE:
WASHINGTON (AFP) - – The websites of credit card giants Visa and Mastercard were knocked offline Wednesday by WikiLeaks supporters, who also took aim at US conservative standard bearer Sarah Palin and a US senator.
Visa.com went down instantaneously at 4:00 pm (2100 GMT) as members of the hackers group known as "Anonymous" launched a coordinated cyber attack on the site as part of what they are calling "Operation Payback."
"TARGET: WWW.VISA.COM :: FIRE FIRE FIRE!!! WEAPONS," Anonymous announced on their Twitter feed @Anon_Operation.
Two-and-a-half hours after the attack, Visa.com remained inaccessible.
So was the Mastercard.com site, attacked earlier in the day for cutting off payments to the WikiLeaks whistleblower website.
Several hours after the attack on Visa.com, the @Anon_Operation Twitter feed itself was suspended.
An attempt to consult @Anon_Operation was met with the message: "Sorry, the profile you are trying to view has been suspended."
The Facebook page of "Operation Payback" also went offline.
Asked to confirm the page had been removed, a Facebook spokesman told AFP the social network takes "action on content that we find or that's reported to us that promotes unlawful activity."
"Specifically, we're sensitive to content that includes pornography, bullying, hate speech, and threats of violence," the spokesman said.
Members of Anonymous, in an online chat with AFP, vowed to attack anyone with an "anti-WikiLeaks agenda." They also extended their cyber assaults to the websites of Palin and US Senator Joe Lieberman, an Independent who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
Palin has described WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as "an anti-American operative with blood on his hands" and asked "Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?"
Her website, SarahPac.com, came under cyber attack from a "small group of Anonymous protesters," according to Sean-Paul Carroll, a threat researcher at PandaLabs, the malware detection laboratory of Panda Security.
Carroll said the Palin website went down for about six minutes.
According to ABC News, the hackers also "disrupted" the personal credit card accounts of Palin and her husband, Todd.
"No wonder others are keeping silent about Assange's antics," ABC News quoted Palin as saying in an email.
"This is what happens when you exercise the First Amendment and speak against his sick, un-American espionage efforts."
Carroll said Anonymous members also briefly took down the website of Lieberman, who issued an early call for US companies to withdraw their technical support from WikiLeaks, an appeal that has been widely followed.
In addition to Visa and Mastercard, Anonymous has already taken credit for temporarily taking down the websites of PayPal, the Swiss Post Office bank and others with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
In a typical DDoS attack, computers are commanded to simultaneously visit a website, overwhelming its servers, slowing service or knocking it offline completely.
"TARGET: WWW.VISA.COM :: FIRE FIRE FIRE!!! WEAPONS," Anonymous announced on their Twitter feed @Anon_Operation.
Two-and-a-half hours after the attack, Visa.com remained inaccessible.
So was the Mastercard.com site, attacked earlier in the day for cutting off payments to the WikiLeaks whistleblower website.
Several hours after the attack on Visa.com, the @Anon_Operation Twitter feed itself was suspended.
An attempt to consult @Anon_Operation was met with the message: "Sorry, the profile you are trying to view has been suspended."
The Facebook page of "Operation Payback" also went offline.
Asked to confirm the page had been removed, a Facebook spokesman told AFP the social network takes "action on content that we find or that's reported to us that promotes unlawful activity."
"Specifically, we're sensitive to content that includes pornography, bullying, hate speech, and threats of violence," the spokesman said.
Members of Anonymous, in an online chat with AFP, vowed to attack anyone with an "anti-WikiLeaks agenda." They also extended their cyber assaults to the websites of Palin and US Senator Joe Lieberman, an Independent who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
Palin has described WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as "an anti-American operative with blood on his hands" and asked "Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?"
Her website, SarahPac.com, came under cyber attack from a "small group of Anonymous protesters," according to Sean-Paul Carroll, a threat researcher at PandaLabs, the malware detection laboratory of Panda Security.
Carroll said the Palin website went down for about six minutes.
According to ABC News, the hackers also "disrupted" the personal credit card accounts of Palin and her husband, Todd.
"No wonder others are keeping silent about Assange's antics," ABC News quoted Palin as saying in an email.
"This is what happens when you exercise the First Amendment and speak against his sick, un-American espionage efforts."
Carroll said Anonymous members also briefly took down the website of Lieberman, who issued an early call for US companies to withdraw their technical support from WikiLeaks, an appeal that has been widely followed.
In addition to Visa and Mastercard, Anonymous has already taken credit for temporarily taking down the websites of PayPal, the Swiss Post Office bank and others with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
In a typical DDoS attack, computers are commanded to simultaneously visit a website, overwhelming its servers, slowing service or knocking it offline completely.
