WikiLeaks has had a rough few weeks, but one group is apparently determined to fight back against efforts to censor WikiLeaks activity: 4chan.
Operation Payback, operated by the clandestine group known as "Anonymous," which reportedly includes members of the "/b/" bulletin board 4chan.org, has launched cyber attacks against companies that have pulled their support for WikiLeaks.
Among the institutions targeted by Operation Payback are PayPal, MasterCard, and Swiss bank PostFinance.
"We can confirm that there have been attempted DDoS attack on paypal.com. These attacks have at times slowed the Web site itself down, but have not significantly impacted payments," PayPal said in a statement. "The PayPal.com site is fully operational."
Last week, PayPal permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks "due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity," the company said.
In a Tuesday statement, PostFinance said "access to www.postfinance.ch and thus also e-finance is currently overloaded owing to a multitude of online enquiries" - most likely a DDoS attack. "The security of customer data is not affected," the bank said. On Monday, PostFinance announced that it had ended its business relationship with WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange because "the Australian citizen provided false information regarding his place of residence during the account opening process."
According to the Twitter feed for Anonymous, meanwhile, Operation Payback has crippled the MasterCard Web site after the credit company - as well as Visa Europe - announced plans to stop accepting WikiLeaks payments.
"We're glad to tell you that http://www.mastercard.com/ is down and it's confirmed," @Anon_Operation tweeted.
MasterCard could be reached for comment; at press time, Mastercard's site was unreachable.
WikiLeaks has been under fire since it released 250,000 confidential U.S. diplomatic cables late last month. Assange was arrested in London Monday, but it was regarding charges of rape brought against him by Swedish authorities and unrelated to the document dump.
Nontheless, WikiLeaks isn't going anywhere anytime soon. There are currently
In addition to defending WikiLeaks, meanwhile, Operation Payback runs a campaign against anti-piracy organizations, and has targeted the Web properties of groups like the Recording Industry Association of America, the U.S. Copyright Office, and the Motion Picture Association of America. Operation Payback might have some enemies of its own, however. Ars Technica reports that an unknown counterforce has targeted the Operation Payback Web site; at press time, it was down.
Additional reporting by Chloe Albanesius