Cyber attacks launched in support of WikiLeaks

The websites of Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal were attacked after they blocked donations by people to WikiLeaks.

The hackers are using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to coordinate their efforts, thereby dragging these companies into the fray.

Social networking sites dragged along
Twitter and Facebook, which have successfully resisted earlier attempts of government control over the flow of information on their sites and were praised in the past for promoting free speech on the Internet, now find themselves in a precarious situation.

The problem surfaced on Wednesday, when a group calling itself ‘Anonymous’ launched ‘Operation Payback.’ The group posted notes about which companies to target and told about the success of hacking operations of other members.

Facebook banned one of the pages of the group, saying that its Terms of Use do not allow the use of Facebook for launching hacking attacks.

A Facebook spokesman said that the company was “sensitive to content that includes pornography, bullying, hate speech and threats of violence and would take action on content that we find or that’s reported to us that promotes unlawful activity.”

On Wednesday morning, chief security officer of Facebook had said that they have not received any official request to block the pages or accounts associated with WikiLeaks.

Twitter too blocked ‘Operation Payback’
The group called ‘Anonymous’ moved on to Twitter, which allowed ‘Operation Payback’ to remain functional throughout the day but blocked it later after it posted a link to a file that contained credit card numbers of thousands of consumers.

Twitter spokesperson declined to comment on its action. “We don’t comment about the specific actions that we take around user accounts,” he said.