Reuters FLASH: Visa Website Unavailable, Targeted by Anonymous Supporters of WikiLeaks

Source: Reuters / MSNBC

updated 5:21 p.m. ET, Wed., Dec. 08, 2010
Assange supporters attack Visa website

NBC, msnbc.com and news services
Hackers rushed to the defense of WikiLeaks on Wednesday, launching a new attack on Visa after shutting down MasterCard, Swedish prosecutors, a Swiss bank and others who have acted against the site and jailed founder Julian Assange.

Internet "hacktivists" operating under the label "Operation Payback" claimed in a Twitter message, "we are attacking www.visa.com in an hour! Get your weapons ready and stay tuned," NBC News reported.

At 4 p.m. ET, the group tweeted: "TARGET: WWW.VISA.COM :: FIRE FIRE FIRE!!! WEAPONS."

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40559236/ns/us_news-wikileaks_in_security/

:shrug:

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/WikiLeaks-Web-Anarchists-Attack-Mastercard-And-PayPal-After-They-Block-Donations-To-Website/Article/201012215849704?f=rss

Sky News Online was redirected to the search engine Bing when it tried to access Visa.

Anon_Operation had given an hour's notice that it would take down the Visa website as part of a campaign against companies that have withdrawn services from the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

Earlier attacks on Mastercard and PayPal were partially successful, affecting Mastercard's European operations.

Sam Kiley, Sky News' security editor, said: "This organisation is very aggressive.

"It's a counter attack to the suspension of WikiLeaks' services by the financial sector that supports them.

"They have attacked them to try and freeze them out of their business."




Edit---more info on the attacks:

Kiley said Mastercard would neither confirm or deny the attack but he knew it had taken place.

He added: "PayPal were knocked back, but not knocked out."

The attack came just a day after the same group of anarchists shut down Swiss bank PostFinance.

The bank had frozen money belonging to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after the latest round of whistleblowing.

PostFinance's website was down for more than 16 hours in total.

the obvious! Duh!

As far as I know.

Not that I doubt for a second that AMEX wouldn't be very happy to follow suit if the situation were to arise.

RT @nops: "There are Some Things Money Can't Buy. For Everything Else, there's HTTP Error 408 Request Timeout" #ddos #wikileaks #payback

:rofl:

:rofl:

:rofl:

@HuffingtonPost: WikiLeaks supporters @Anon_Operation: Facebook BANNED our page http://huff.to/gPwO00

while its a pain in their ass, its just a website, not like the shut down the system and rendered the cards useless

But in any case it's just short term so you're probably right.

scary, yet...