ProfitBrite

Who Have The Hackers Attacked In Defence Of WikiLeaks?

WikiLeaks was the source of the leak of thousands of classified US cables containing a massive array of information that outlined US government policy and opinions around the globe. In protest to the backlash felt by WikiLeaks, Anonymous, as the group is known, have been targeting companies and organisations to make a point about WikiLeaks' freedom of speech and at the incarceration of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

So who has been targeted?

Amazon - Withdrawing Hosting ACS:Law - For asking for money from alleged illegal file sharers to avoid legal action Visa - Withdrawing Payment Services MasterCard - Withdrawing Payment Services PayPal - Withdrawing Payment Services Government - Jailing Julian Assange

Each of these big name organisations and companies have been subjected to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack which sees an army of individual PCs, donated willingly by their owners, being placed under the control of a botnet which coordinates relentless page requests from the target website until their server can't cope and the whole site crashes.

The hope is to cause as much disruption as possible to these companies' services to make a stand against what the group considers to be an unfair or even government dictated withdrawal of service due to the sensitivity of the leaks posted by WikiLeaks There are now several things that could happen: the government could find the ringleaders of the Anonymous groups 'Operation Payback' campaign and put a serious dent in their advances by jailing them, though as point of the group is that it is anonymous, the chances of this seem slim.

Merchant account services and online credit card processing may be affected enough that all global commerce has to stop for a while. The attacks may be halted by Anonymous when they feel they have made their point, either when Julian Assange is released or when they have exhausted their offensive tactics. Or the attacks may never end and this could be World War 3 starting right here online, carried out between big businesses and the government versus the people fighting for freedom of speech and transparent government.

One thing is for sure, the actions of Anonymous and WikiLeaks will have a long and lasting effect on the way governments and businesses approach their communications in future.

If your looking for [http://www.lancorepayment.co.uk/]merchant account services or [http://www.lancorepayment.co.uk/money-transfer-services/info_13.html]money transfer services then I would look no further than here.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?Who-Have-The-Hackers-Attacked-In-Defence-Of-WikiLeaks?&id=5636074] Who Have The Hackers Attacked In Defence Of WikiLeaks?