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December 8th, 2010, 10:57 GMT · By

Anonymous Attacks Swedish Prosecutors and MasterCard

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Anonymous takes mastercard.com offline
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Following the arrest of Julian Assange and MasterCard’s decision to block the ability of card owners to donate to WikiLeaks, the Anonymous group of hacktivists launched DDoS attacks against the Swedish Public Prosecutions Office and the credit card company.

Since the beginning of last week, when it began publishing leaked U.S. State Department diplomatic cables, WikiLeaks has become an organization non grata for governments and companies around the world.

It wasn’t enough that its website was the target of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and had to move away from its primary ISP. It also got kicked out by Amazon from its hosting platform.

PayPal then stepped in and suspended the organization’s donations account, while Dyn-owned EveryDNS terminated DNS services for the wikileaks.org domain.

The latest blow to WikiLeaks came earlier this week when MasterCard publicly announced that it is taking steps to block people’s ability to donate to the organization.

WikiLeaks' founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange is also having problems. First, Swiss bank PostFinance suspended his personal finances account, claiming that he used a fake address when he applied for it.

Then, yesterday, he gave himself up to the UK police after an international arrest warrant was issued in his name through the Interpol for sexual assault charges in Sweden.

Anonymous, a group of Internet activists from around the world, who claim to fight against censorship and copyright, pledged support to WikiLeaks and vowed to attack anyone who stands against it.

It started with the websites of PayPal last week and continued with PostFinance. Yesterday, the primary target was changed to aklagare.se, the website of the Swedish Office of Public Prosecutions.

Today the group is attacking mastercard.com, which is down at the time of writing this article. “WE ARE GLAD TO TELL YOU THAT http://www.mastercard.com/ is DOWN AND IT'S CONFIRMED! #ddos #wikileaks Operation:Payback,” Anonymous announced via its Twitter account.

It’s unlikely that hostilities will stop here, as following in MasterCard’s lead, Visa Europe also began suspending payments to WikiLeaks.

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Comment #1 by: Eric on 08 Dec 2010, 20:19 UTC reply to this comment

I'd like to remind everyone that Wikileaks has yet to be convicted of any crime. It is strange that their organization can be completely hamstrung through obscure claims they are engaging in illegal activity without any due process whatsoever.

Funny how America (largely the leader in the crusade against Wikileaks) prides itself on being the freest, most just nation on Earth but has no issue attacking companies like Amazon that indirectly support Wikileaks despite there being no trial, no proof of guilt, no jurisdiction, and no due process. I thought we were supposed to punish criminals after they were proven guilty?


Comment #2 by: rkap on 22 Dec 2010, 13:07 UTC reply to this comment

It is hard to get the facts but having finally looked around the net and read statements by Attorneys involved and Assange himself it seems to me the Laws regarding Rape in Sweeden and the way it is administered is a joke. Possibly hijacked by so called "Feminists" of an era I hoped had passed. Women who still want to put all responsibility on men and blame men for every mistake they make themselves as people. That is not true Liberation - liberation was not only about RIGHTS and opportunities for women but also about women learning to take RESPONSIBILITY for there own actions and wellbeing and sexuality etc. Get themselves into something they regret - simply take responsibility themselves and learn from the experience. Stop blaming others for there own stupidity or lack of action. To me it sounds like we may have 2 very insecure disempowered women involved who are being manipulated by others. Groupie types. Of course they would like to think they are Liberated but still are of the YES YES YES - NO NO NO type who afterwards will always say " Your fault". "Emotionally children". It appears in this area Sweeden is still hopeless and has not come to terms with the fact women also have to accept some responsibility for the situations they put themselves in.
If the Sweedish authorities think they have a case why don't they Charge him with Rape - "there definition of Rape" and let the British Courts decide if they want to extradite him based on the details of those charges. If they only want to talk to him then send someone to Britain to talk to him. He is and has been happy to talk to the Sweedish authorities from what I can gather all along but they refused to talk to him. I don't blame him for not wanting to go back and put himself at the mercy of such a hopeless system.
From what I have read Assanges main crime is he carried on with 2 [maybe more?] women at the same time. I imagine there are lots of Groupies about at the moment only too willing to jump into his bed at any time. That is not a crime if he takes up the offers - if it was we would have to lock up half the population of the world - both men and women. The Sweedish Legal Authorities certainly do not come out of this looking very good. If they really have something why the hell didn't they do something months ago. It should not take "Einstein" to work it out. Increasingly now they are looking more like idiots by the day. Are they being manipulated from within or externally - so much for the great democracy Sweeden we have all heard about. Maybe it is a myth.

Ross - Australia.

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