Hackers Attack

Hackers Attack Companies That Hindered WikiLeaks

By RAVI SOMAIYA and JOHN MARKOFF

Published: December 8, 2010

• RECOMMEND
• TWITTER
• SIGN IN TO E-MAIL
• PRINT
• SINGLE PAGE
• REPRINTS
• SHARE

LONDON — A small army of activist hackers orchestrated a broad campaign of cyberattacks on Wednesday in support of the beleaguered antisecrecy organization WikiLeaks, which has drawn governmental criticism from around the globe for its release of classified American documents and whose founder, Julian Assange, is being held in Britain on accusations of sex offenses.

State’s Secrets

Articles in this series examine American diplomatic cables as a window on relations with the rest of the world in an age of war and terrorism.

•  Documents: Selected Dispatches

Related

• The Lede Blog: Attacks on MasterCard and PayPal Sites to Avenge WikiLeaks Are 'Operation Payback' (December 8, 2010)

• The Lede Blog: ‘Operation Payback’ Attacks Visa(December 8, 2010)

Targets included Mastercard.com, which had stopped processing donations for WikiLeaks; Amazon.com, which revoked server space from the group; the online payment service PayPal, which cut off its commercial cooperation, and the lawyer representing the two Swedish women who have accused Mr. Assange in the sex case. The hackers also accused Visa of stopping the processing of donations for Wikileaks, and Visa.com was also affected.

By Wednesday afternoon, a counterattack had begun with Netcraft, a British Internet monitoring firm, reporting that the Web site being used by the hackers to distribute denial-of-service software had been suspended by a Dutch hosting firm, Leaseweb.

The hackers — a loosely affiliated group who call themselves Anonymous — were continuing to give instructions for the denial of service attacks via a Twitter account.

Anonymous had vowed to take revenge on any organization that lined up against WikiLeaks. The group claimed responsibility for at least the Mastercard attack, and, according to one activist associated with the group, was conducting multiple other attacks.

That activist, Gregg Housh, said in a telephone interview that 1,500 people were on online forums and chatrooms including Anonops.net, mounting mass and repeated “denial of service” attacks on sites that have moved against Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks in recent days.

The hacker army has rallied around the theory that all the actions against the organization and against Mr. Assange, including the rape accusations, are politically motivated efforts to silence those challenging authority.

==================================================