Anonymous Pledges Full Support for WikiLeaks and Julian Assange

After launching crippling DDoS attacks against the PayPal blog over the weekned, the Anonymous group officially pledged complete support for WikiLeaks and its Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange.

Anonymous is a group of hacktivists, which claims to fight against censorship and the draconian copyright legislation lobbied for by the entertainment industry.

Anonymous is not an organization with a defined structure or leaders. It’s a gathering of Internet users from across the globe who feel the same about certain subjects and who are willing to fight for or against them, sometimes using illegal means.

One of the group’s first campaigns was Operation Chanology, a series of virtual and real world attacks and protests against the Church of Scientology.

Another similar campaign, Operation Titstorm, was directed at the Australian government, which was working on a nationwide Internet filtering solution.

Operation Payback, the group’s latest effort, targeted the entertainment industry and anti-piracy groups, after it was revealed that an Indian company paid by film studios launched distributed denial of service attacks against torrent sites.

“By doing everything to discredit WikiLeaks, Julian Assagne and all others involved, the world's governments demonstrated that they are worse than terrorists. At least terrorists are honest in what they try to achieve,” the group wrote on its website.

“[...] Our intention is to find out who is responsible for this failed attempt at censorship. This is why we intend to utilize our resources to raise awareness, attack those against and support those who are helping lead our world to freedom and democracy,” it added.

The group plans to offer WikiLeaks an additional mirror to keep its website online and plan to artificially raise its search page ranking (Googlebomb).

Its members also plan to create counter-porpaganda and coordinate DDoS attacks against various censorship-related targets that are yet to be decided.

“We will find and will attack those who stand against Wikileaks and we will support WikiLeaks in everything they need,” the group stresses.

Another Anonymous manifesto circulating online is called “Operation Avenge Assange” and calls people to organize protests, send letters to politicians, paint pro-WikiLeaks graffiti, print leaked US State Department cables and pass them around and use social networking to show support for the whistleblower website and its leader.