Hackers go to war for Wikileaks

A group of hackers going by the name "Anonymous" is carrying out revenge against companies that have withdrawn services to the controversial site Wikileaks. Anonymous claims responsibility for distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against Mastercard and PayPal, which had stopped processing donations to Wikileaks. The Swiss bank PostFinance, which had closed the account of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, was targeted.

The BBC refers to the group as "hacktivists", a combination of "hackers" and "activists".

Security analyst Noa Bar Yosef of the firm Imperva said the attacks are "very focused". A DDoS attack sends so many requests to a server that it can no longer respond at all.

Doyel Maitra of Mastercard told the BBC: "We are working to restore normal speed of service. There is no impact whatsoever on Mastercard or Maestro cardholders' ability to use their cards for secure transactions."

Wikileaks is under fire for publishing 250,000 private messages from US diplomats. Before the cyberattacks took place, a member of Anonymous known as "Coldblood" told the BBC: "Websites that are bowing down to government pressure have become targets. As an organization, we have always taken a strong stance on censorship and freedom of expression on the internet and come out against those who seek to destroy it by any means. We feel that Wikileaks has become more than just about leaking of documents. It has become a war ground, the people vs. the government."