WikiLeaks supporters linked to MasterCard cyber attack

CREDIT CARD company MasterCard fell victim to a cyber attack yesterday which appeared to have been orchestrated by supporters of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

Users of MasterCard’s website experienced disruption after the “denial of service” attack. It is believed to have been organised in response to the company’s refusal to handle donations to WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks has caused controversy after publishing a series of leaked documents which have embarrassed the US government. Its founder Julian Assange was arrested in London on Tuesday under a European arrest warrant. He is wanted by Swedish authorities over allegations of sexual offences.

MasterCard said last night it had detected a service disruption on its secure code payment system, and that despite efforts to remedy the situation customers may still be experiencing intermittent connectivity issues.

Paul Mutton, who runs internet services company NetCraft, said: “I’ve seen people indicating that the payments are starting to fail, so the attack does seem to be stopping people paying for stuff. However, that’s not going to compromise the security of people’s credit card details, it’s simply going to stop stuff being processed.”

MasterCard has yet to indicate when normal service will be resumed.

In order to fund its operations, WikiLeaks solicits donations from users through its website. On Monday, MasterCard announced that it would not handle these donations as the website was engaged in what it termed “illegal activity”. Visa, Amazon and online payments firm PayPal have also withdrawn services to the website.

Speaking yesterday, Osama Bedier of PayPal said: “On November 22nd, the state department and the US government wrote a letter saying that the WikiLeaks activities were deemed illegal in the United States, and as a result, our policy group had to take the decision to suspend the account.” He later clarified that he was referring to correspondence between the US state department and WikiLeaks, not between the former and PayPal.

On Monday, a Swiss bank that closed the account of Mr Assange suffered a cyber attack and the Swedish prosecution service was also attacked.

A denial-of-service attack occurs when many users issue multiple requests to a website with the intention of overloading its capacity.

It is thought a loose, ad hoc network of internet freedom of speech activists called “Anonymous” is behind the MasterCard attack, which they have termed “Operation Payback”. The Anonymous group is believed to have originated on internet message board 4Chan.