Computer hackers supporting the WikiLeaks whistleblowing campaign tried to bring down the Amazon website yesterday as fears grew that the British government will be next.
Yesterday WikiLeaks continued to leak controversial diplomatic cables online even though Julian Assange, 39, is in custody facing deportation over claims that he sexually assaulted two women in Sweden.
The group of hackers, called Anonymous, said it would target British government websites if Mr Assange were extradited to Sweden, where he is wanted over allegations of sexual assault. Gregg Housh, an American internet activist who previously worked with the hackers, said: “They will go after the weakest links, because they want to see results.”
The 1,500-strong network of online activists has already sabotaged the websites of MasterCard, Visa and the Swedish government with millions of bogus visits. The attacks, termed “Operation Payback”, came after the credit card companies and PayPal, an online payment firm, announced that they would no longer process donations to the anti-secrecy organization.
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Yesterday, having already crashed MasterCard payment systems around the world, they also attacked Amazon because it had removed WikiLeaks information from its computer servers. The electronic attack failed, but the group behind the hacking – which calls itself Anonymous – said it would continue to target computer systems around the world.
The hackers’ actions so far have been essentially attacks by volume, known as DDoS, or distributed denial of service, in which the target site is hit with increased numbers of visitors with the intention of exceeding its capabilities and forcing it to crash. In this case, hundreds of volunteers have downloaded something called a botnet, which aids the distribution of the command to attack the site. The volunteer hackers wait until they are given a signal on an internet chat room, before launching the attack. The attacks are illegal in Britain and carry a maximum sentence of two years.
Meanwhile, Dutch prosecutors said last night they have arrested a 16-year-old boy suspected of involvement in the WikiLeaks cyber attacks on websites ‘including MasterCard and PayPal, among others’. They believe he is a part of a much larger group of hackers, who they are in the process of tracking down.
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