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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."
It doesn't discredit wikileaks though fox news types will probably claim wikileaks are the ones doing it.
It is damned retarded though.
a good ad campaign (mastercard doesn't care about freedom of speech etc) and taking your buisness elsewhere would do much more.
By denying us the rights to send our money to this great organization they effectively said: we are the bitches of the US and we condemn free speech, the first amendment and hate the truth. That's why.
Wow, angsty much?
MasterCard is an American company. In America, distributing classified documents is illegal. They stopped allowing people to send money to a criminal (in their jurisdiction) company. Case closed. This has nothing to do with 'free speech' and the First Amendment doesn't have anything to do with this. Wikileaks can still say what they said yesterday, Mastercard is just not supporting them anymore.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Whoever is doing it, such attacks are just plain wrong. Attacking infrastructure may be harmful and amounts to terrorism. That would apply even more so if transaction servers were hit.
Wikileaks releasing what info they have on practices within the banking system is the only thing close to being an attack that I'd expect from them. If more openness about what has or does go on within the banking system results in more effective regulation of the industry, then it is a good thing. That serves the sort of journalistic role that other media may be less aggressive about playing. When news organizations depend heavily on advertising from those they report on, they're more apt to tread with caution. Mainstream commercial media leans towards infotainment as a result.
How much influence do ad dollars carry? Imagine that there was a company pushing $500 million at promoting a phone platform. Then imagine publishers/media that wanting some of that $500 million fearing that publishing negative reviews would affect their slice.
The banks most likely have very real financial incentive to attack Wikileaks, but not being profit-driven, then reverse can't be said of Wikileaks.
You and I simply disagree on this. I don't think buying a domain and installing wikimedia, wordpress, etc automatically makes one a "journalist." I don't think wikileaks is a journalistic organization; I think it is a bunch of punks with a grudge and nothing more.
"Are they "disrupting business"? Perhaps, but no worse than the lunch counter sit-ins did."
You very obviously don't run an online business.
I'm currently unable to accept ANY payments except Paypal, and pretty soon it looks like those are about to stop going through as well.
Considering I make about 5 grand a day on a good day, this is going to really hurt me.
For once, I'm just thinking about heading to 4chan's servers, and risking the jail time smashing every fucking machine there is right now.
I'm not THAT far from the database, either. Moot screwed up using his iPhone to post, I've got the GPS coordinates. It's only 65 miles away in LA.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Yes, because "geminidomino" has it all figured out! Everyone else is ignorant and apathetic! THANK BABY JESUS we have "geminidomino" to show us the light!!! Please! Tell us more about how you are the keeper of all world knowledge and how the world is black and white and that insignificant, douchebag little computer geeks are the true sages of our time!
If this ANONYMOUS are the same guys who were fighting the Church of Scientology, they have just pissed away all of the good will they generated by fighting the COS. They are now acting just like the COS does when they go after so-called "suppressive persons".
Assange is not behaving like an ethical member of the press. He is acting like a terrorist. He has threatened to leak even more information about financial institutions. Folks, he is potentially threatening to hurt your own financial futures for his personal gain. He does not give a damn about anyone but himself.
ANONYMOUS should take a long look at themselves and realize that they have become what they claim to hate.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Freedom of speech, priceless. For everything else, there's Mastercard.
Your freedom of speech doesn't include the right to violate your government's diplomatic privacy, which is a long established principle of civilization... the confidentiality of diplomatic communications. Governments have to have the assurance that they can speak to each other at times confidentially, and Julian Assange is basically trying to that. There are damned good reasons why governments need to have this confidentiality with each other at times, and a story I read just this morning provides a stark example of why.
Two up and coming leaders in the Chinese government have now had their private conversations with US diplomats leaked by Assange and his gang, with probable consequences for US-Chinese relations. The men in question were on the fast track to replacing men in very, very high positions in the Chinese government... one of them equivilant to the Vice Presidency of the US. Both of these men were becoming known to US diplomats as believers in the rule of law, of technological and societal progress, and of friendlier cross-pacific trade and in particular, they had a zeal for cracking down on crime and corruption in China, including crime in the booming business community.
The leaks may have dealt their careers a blow. They're members of the Chinese Communist Party... officially, it's still a one party state, after all... and now they'll likely be seen as too soft and friendly towards the west by the hardliners in China's military industrial wing and the military leadership. Their ascensions to higher office may now be jeapordized. Had Wikileaks been around in the mid-80's, it's likely that someone like Mikhail Gorbachev could have never become General Secretary. This kind of practice will make it much harder for government reformers the world over to move into positions of authority, especially in non-democratic societies.
Look at the Cuban Missile Crisis. All of the negotiations that ended the standoff were held secretely, behind the scenes. The compromises that both sides made... the Soviets pulling their missiles from Cuba, the US pulling their Jupiter missiles from Turkey six months later... would have NEVER been supported by the rest of the governments of both nations, nor the publics of both nations. Instead of cooler heads prevailing, you'd have gotten more heated confrontation. Neither John F. Kennedy nor Nikita Kruschev would have had the support of their governments had their positions been known because of something like a Wikileaks release.
Julian Assange is not fighting for your freedom. Wikileaks is not fighting for your freedom of speech. Because no one is stopping you from speaking. No one is stopping your free speech, because the diplomatic cables are not your speech. You have no right to them, nor any burning need to see what's in them. What Assange is doing is an act of petty vandalism. Like some half-ass Tyler Durden wannabe, he just wants to blow it all up.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel