I normally would never link to a website called Malware Database, and if you’re running a vulnerable system, you might want to be careful here.

BUT! Malware Database is mirroring Anonymous’ Operation Payback blog (the original is down due to counter-counter-counter DDoS’in’), and it’s pretty fascinating.

Update — 12/8/2010 — 8:24 AM
Mastercard.com is still selected as the main target and has not came back online since our last report. 7 hours of downtime and counting.

The amount of participants in the attackers chat room have soared to over 2200 people and there are currently over 1,700 computers in the voluntary botnet.

Update — 12/8/2010 — 12:26 PM
Mastercard.com still under attack with 11 hours of downtime and counting, but the target will change to Visa.com at 1 PM PST.

This is the first time that the group officially targets Visa.com, but we have already observed 106 service interruptions and over 12 hours of downtime for Visa since we started monitoring yesterday at 9PM.

I’m not a big fan of DDoS attacks generally. From experience: they suck. But the counter-attack against those who are attacking WikiLeaks is following the same principle that the U.S. and other governments have been using. The governments didn’t like what WikiLeaks was doing, so they used political pressure and threats to corporations doing business with them to try to take the site down. Keep in mind that WikiLeaks has not been charged with any crime. Anonymous (and others) didn’t like what those governments were doing, so they’re using the tools at their disposal to counter-attack.

Anthony Hecht is The Stranger's Chief Technology Officer. He owns no monkeys.

58 replies on “Watching Operation Payback”

  2. Thanks for that link, Joe. Interesting that Lieberman’s site was hit too.

    Truly, this is becoming the “shot heard ’round the world.”

  4. @40 – Sure, I’m not saying this is going to be particularly effective, or that it won’t make more people view WikiLeaks in a bad light. But that was already happening—not because of these attacks, but because most of the media is taking that position. These companies didn’t have to bow to gov’t pressure. They chose to take the government’s side in this argument, before any charges have been filed, etc.

    Protests of any kind always drum up support for both sides, and can help portray the company being protested as the victim.

    This is an interesting form of protest in a new kind of battle, regardless of what we think of the people who are doing it.

  5. @55 Interesting, sure, but I wouldn’t call hacking corporate sites a “form of protest”. It’s an attack from one self-interested party (hackers) against another self-interested party (companies). If “protest” is going to be used for such actions at all, I would save it for attacks on the government. And even that’s a stretch for such a loaded, righteous word; this is more of an aggressive action (an attack in the “battle”) than a declaration of opinion.

  6. @55 The calculation on the part of MC/VISA was government can investigate us and make life hard vs Wikileaks can’t do anything, therefore we will dump our customer like the government asks. Anon is showing the world that the other side of that equation is not nothing, that in fact customers and the wider community can also make life hard if they don’t like what you do.

    The biggest problem is that there is no viable way to legally register protest with the credit card companies that they will actually take notice of. MC and VISA are pretty much the ONLY options if you are a part of the modern day economy. As the leaked documents show they have used the US government to ensure that they are ubiquitous throughout the world, and kept competition to a minimum.

  8. @57,

    Right. That’s why they’re also attacking the Swedish government and Assange’s accusers.

    These hackers are bunch of childish fucktards, full stop.

    Before all this started, I didn’t give much of a shit one way or another. Now I’m firmly opposed to Wikileaks and its “defenders.”

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