Anonymous sure has been fairly busy recently with their recent attacks on PayPal, MasterCard, and now are preparing to take down Visa's website according to a tweet by @Anon_Operation under Operation Payback.
The group today announced the attack by tweeting;
NEXT TARGET: WWW.VISA.COM | TR:30 MINS. GET YOUR WEAPONS READY #ddos #wikiealsk #payback,
Anon has already starting attempting to get around their hosting problems and Twitter blocking the popular tag #wikileaks and their information page regarding the attack has utilized the free site, PasteHTML to set up a quick and temporary page.
PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa all have followed through in not allowing donations to be made to the WikiLeaks organization. Whether this was due to commands issued by the United States Government or not isn't clear for at least MasterCard and Visa, but was confirmed in PayPal's case.
Interestingly enough, and perhaps a poor move by the Anon movement, one can quickly check to see who all this has been retweeted by, likely making them suspects of aiding DDoS attacks, which are illegal. The Anon Operation has switched their hashtags to #wikiealsk to get around the prevention of using #wikileaks in trending topics enforced by the social networking site, Twitter.
Users get involved in a DDoS by voluntarily allowing their computers to become remotely controlled so that many can work as one. Aiding in this type of activity is illegal, although it doesn't seem to be an enforced law right now.
At the time of the tweet, Visa had 30 minutes left until the attack begins, time will tell how their servers will hold and what repercussions will come from this latest in a series of Anonymous attacks.
Update #1: The group has started the attack; Visa.com appears to be down for all right now. That was fast.
Update #2: If you're in the US and wanting to use Visa.com, you can visithttp://usa.visa.com/, which appears to use a different provider.
Update #3: The group stated on their IRC channel during the attack:
We are the marching sound of a dawning resistance. We are tired of the disinformation; we are tired of the corruption. We are tired of the proxy wars and the secrecy. Freedom of information is the noose around this status quo.
Update #4: Facebook just took down Operation Paybacks' page.
An interesting commentary here. I'm wondering why these hackers and all of the 'zombie' computers they're controlling can't be taken down? If a person hasn't got enough sense to take the necessary precautions to protect his/her computer, he/she shouldn't be allowed on the web!!
-- Edited by Vindicated on Thursday 9th of December 2010 01:29:49 PM