So is this what we can look forward to as the “wars” of the future. One country attacking the others Internet websites that are critical.
With everything thing now in the “cloud” and accessible by the Internet a country can employee a team of hackers (which many already have) to take down the critical servers of government, business, hospitals etc and create havoc. It was mentioned to me by a member of our forum that Iran is being attacked this way to take down their nuclear program. It also can be done to launch a weapon. Another member mentioned the China also has it’s own hackers….the new frontier is here.
Operation Payback cripples MasterCard site in revenge for WikiLeaks ban
Hackers attack credit card company and Swedish prosecution authority as ‘censorship’ row escalates
Source: Guardian News
Authors: Esther Addley and Josh Halliday
he websites of the international credit card MasterCard and the Swedish prosecution authority are among the latest to be taken offline in the escalating technological battle over WikiLeaks, web censorship and perceived political pressure.
Co-ordinated attacks by online activists who support the site and its founder Julian Assange – who is in UK custody accused of raping two Swedish women – have seen the websites of the alleged victims’ Swedish lawyer disabled, while commercial and political targets have also been subject to attack by a loose coalition of global hackers.
The Swedish prosecution authority has confirmed its website was attacked last night and this morning. MasterCard was partially paralysed today in revenge for the payment network’s decision to cease taking donations to WikiLeaks.
In an attack referred to as Operation Payback, a group of online activists calling themselves Anonymous appear to have orchestrated a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack on the financial site, bringing its service to a halt.
Attempts to access www.mastercard.com have been unsuccessful since shortly after 9.30am.
The site would say only that it was “experiencing heavy traffic on its external corporate website” but insisted this would not interfere with its ability to process transactions.
But one payment service company told the BBC its customers were experiencing “a complete loss of service” on MasterCard SecureCode. The credit card company later confirmed that loss.
Read the rest here: Guardian News
