REUTERS/Luke MacGregor
Here’s a priceless update for you. A group of anonymous online hacker activists (hacktivists) have initiated what they call Operation: Payback, a call to action to shut down websites of companies that have pulled the plug on WikiLeaks in the wake of the US embassy cable releases. And its latest target? MasterCard. (via Techland)
By releasing a series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against these company sites, the group is using a similar method of attacks that hit WikiLeaks’ website in the past weeks. The way it works is that by launching a DDoS, a site is flooded with so many page requests that it becomes overwhelmed and drops offline. Access to the MasterCard website appears to be possible intermittently and it is still visible from some countries.