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MasterCard Hit By WikiLeaks Payback Attacks
An anonymous reader writes "MasterCard's website has been hit by a distributed denial of service attack. Netcraft describes how the attack uses a voluntary botnet of LOIC (low orbit ion cannon) users to swamp sites with traffic. PostFinance, the PayPal blog and Swedish prosecutors have been targeted previously."
Reminds me of an article I saw on Techdirt the other day pointing out that Visa and Mastercard were getting all high and mighty about morality in regards to Wikileaks but happily fielding transactions for sites like the KKK.
My work here is dung.
"Act like fucking adolescents?"
This is the modern equivalent of a lunch counter sit-in. No user has had their computer hijacked, they are all participating of their free will. Are they "disrupting business"? Perhaps, but no worse than the lunch counter sit-ins did.
I would expect that to never come to light honestly. If they admitted how much the DDoS cost them, it would essentially give a 'quantifiable' damage scores (not sure how else to describe it) to anyone who pursued similar attacks in the future. It'd be fascinating to see though; the amount of lost revenue, divided by the number of unique IP's in the DDoS should give you dollars lost on a per-node basis. Then it'd give you cost metrics, and where there's readily available cost metrics, there's business opportunities. Just think - "we'll pay you $.01 to run this program for an hour!" while in the background you're causing 250$ in damage to a target. Sorry, mind is wandering in the dark side now :)
it seems that donations to wikileaks are still being processed by this startup: http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/12/08/wikileaks-continues-to-fund-itself-via-tech-startup-flattr/
Consumer action is another tactic. Here's the letter I sent my bank:
Dear Smile.co.uk,
One of the reasons I am a customer of Smile Banking is your commitment to ethical banking.
I do not believe that Visa's recent decision to block payments to Wikileaks is consistent with that ethical stance.
I understand that due to Visa's near-monopoly on card payments and online payments, it is not really practical for either Smile Banking or myself personally to discontinue our use of Visa debit card facilities. However I would like to send a message to Visa that this decision has weakened, not strengthened, their brand reputation to me and, I would assume, others.
To this end:
1. Please would you forward this message to Smile Banking's board of directors
2. Please would Smile Banking collate any similar messages of disapproval regarding Visa's actions from other Smile customers, should they be received, and communicate the aggregate message to Visa
3. Please, so that I can modify my behaviour where possible, would you advise me to what extent the following activities result in income to Visa
a: A debit card payment where I the cardholder am present
b: A cash withdrawal at a high street ATM
c: An online/telephone debit card payment
Many thanks,