Hackers take down Mastercard website
A group of hackers has claimed responsibility for taking down the Mastercard website in Europe and the US, in retaliation for shutting its services to whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
The group of internet activists, who called themselves Anonymous, appears to be behind the series of Distributed Denial of Service Attacks (DDoS) that caused the site to be unavailable since this morning. “Operation Payback” is being carried out against Mastercard after the company's recent decision to stop processing donations to WikiLeaks.
The American credit card giant explained its decision on Monday, saying it was doing so because the website was engaged in illicit activities, therefore going against the company's policy.
After the website went down early this morning, a Twitter feed by user @Anon_Operation wrote: “We are glad to tell you that www.mastercard.com/ is down and it's confirmed.”
Another feed from @AnonyWatcher read: “Tango down – Restricting funds to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. All countries should be down, too.”
The only Mastercard comment so far, dismissed the attacks from Operation Payback, trying to restore calm to its users.
“Mastercard is experiencing heavy traffic on its external corporate website – Mastercard.com,” read the statement. “We are working to restore normal speed of service. There is no impact whatsoever on our cardholders ability to use their cards for secure transactions.”
Since then, the overall impact of the attacks is unsure. The websites have been down for the whole day, and from what is is known at this stage, the whole service is currently unserviceable. Mastercard SecureCode is also down. This is affecting all payment service providers, while all transactions via Mastercard or Maestro cannot be processed at the moment.
Again on Twitter, the group wrote: “Freedom of expression is priceless. For everything else, there's Mastercard.”
Previous targets of the attacks were Paypal on Monday, and the Swiss post office, PostFinance, later the same day. Anonymous claimed responsibility for those attacks as well, explaining, in the Swiss case, that the organisation was targeted after it froze WikiLeaks funds that were gathered for the legal defence of its founder, Julian Assange.
Paypal issued a statement on Friday saying it had permanently restricted WikiLeaks account because its payment service “cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity”.
DDoS attacks are done by overloading a server hosting a target website (eg Mastercard) by bombarding it with requests. The server, which has a limited capability of handling and filing requests, cannot cope and is taken offline.
Operation Payback initially started against pro-copyright organisations, through massive use of DDoS attacks to take the websites down.
Operation Payback's website defends the practice of piracy and violation of copyright. “We are an anonymous, decentralised movement which fights against censorship and copywrong,” it reads.
And it looks like it is not going to be a short-lived trend, either. An FAQ on the website asks: “When are you going to stop?” To which Anonymous answers: “When we stop being angry.”
(Read the full article on The Fresh Outlook)
The group of internet activists, who called themselves Anonymous, appears to be behind the series of Distributed Denial of Service Attacks (DDoS) that caused the site to be unavailable since this morning. “Operation Payback” is being carried out against Mastercard after the company's recent decision to stop processing donations to WikiLeaks.
The American credit card giant explained its decision on Monday, saying it was doing so because the website was engaged in illicit activities, therefore going against the company's policy.
After the website went down early this morning, a Twitter feed by user @Anon_Operation wrote: “We are glad to tell you that www.mastercard.com/ is down and it's confirmed.”
Another feed from @AnonyWatcher read: “Tango down – Restricting funds to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. All countries should be down, too.”
The only Mastercard comment so far, dismissed the attacks from Operation Payback, trying to restore calm to its users.
“Mastercard is experiencing heavy traffic on its external corporate website – Mastercard.com,” read the statement. “We are working to restore normal speed of service. There is no impact whatsoever on our cardholders ability to use their cards for secure transactions.”
Since then, the overall impact of the attacks is unsure. The websites have been down for the whole day, and from what is is known at this stage, the whole service is currently unserviceable. Mastercard SecureCode is also down. This is affecting all payment service providers, while all transactions via Mastercard or Maestro cannot be processed at the moment.
Again on Twitter, the group wrote: “Freedom of expression is priceless. For everything else, there's Mastercard.”
Previous targets of the attacks were Paypal on Monday, and the Swiss post office, PostFinance, later the same day. Anonymous claimed responsibility for those attacks as well, explaining, in the Swiss case, that the organisation was targeted after it froze WikiLeaks funds that were gathered for the legal defence of its founder, Julian Assange.
Paypal issued a statement on Friday saying it had permanently restricted WikiLeaks account because its payment service “cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity”.
DDoS attacks are done by overloading a server hosting a target website (eg Mastercard) by bombarding it with requests. The server, which has a limited capability of handling and filing requests, cannot cope and is taken offline.
Operation Payback initially started against pro-copyright organisations, through massive use of DDoS attacks to take the websites down.
Operation Payback's website defends the practice of piracy and violation of copyright. “We are an anonymous, decentralised movement which fights against censorship and copywrong,” it reads.
And it looks like it is not going to be a short-lived trend, either. An FAQ on the website asks: “When are you going to stop?” To which Anonymous answers: “When we stop being angry.”
(Read the full article on The Fresh Outlook)