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http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/12/201012916376458396.html
'Hactivists' wage war for WikiLeaks
Tech-savvy supporters of jailed WikiLeaks founder launch cyber attacks dubbed
"info war" as censorship row escalates.
Last Modified: 09 Dec 2010 18:27 GMT
Assange loyalists have already taken credit for temporarily taking down
websites of Mastercard and others [Reuters]
The website attacks launched by supporters of WikiLeaks show 21st-century cyber
warfare evolving into a more amateur and anarchic affair than many predicted.
Attempts to silence WikiLeaks after the leaking of some 250,000 classified US
state department cables seem to have produced something rather different -
something of a popular rebellion amongst hundreds or thousands of tech-savvy
activists.
"This is a cat and mouse game. It's not just the supporters of WikiLeaks but
also some opponents that have been launching cyber attacks over the last few
weeks," Kevin Anderson, a technology journalist and New Media expert, told Al
Jazeera on Thursday.
"It is definitely a cyberwar where people are taking sides and putting their
computers where their alliances are," he said.
'Info war'
The cyberwar began after MasterCard, PayPal, Visa and a Swiss bank blocked
payments to WikiLeaks, which runs on donations. These companies, along with
Amazon, which banned WikiLeaks from using its servers, are thought to have
given in on a US pressure.
In retaliation, a hacker group calling itself Anonymous, launched "Operation
Avenge Assange", referring to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange - targeting the
credit card companies, with what are called "denial of service" (DDoS) attacks.
Swedish prosecutors behind Assange's arrest in London for extradition and
questioning over sex charges were also hit. Some WikiLeaks supporters view the
charges are politically motivated.
New Media expert Kevin Anderson speaks to Al Jazeera about "Operation
Payback"
The group used social networking site Twitter to co-ordinate attacks on
websites belonging to entities it views as trying to silence WikiLeaks.
Twitter and Facebook have suspended the accounts of the "Anonymous" group.
"The first serious infowar is now engaged," John Perry Barlow, the former
Grateful Dead lyricist and founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told
his followers on Twitter last week.
"The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops."
Barlow's "declaration of independence for cyberspace" has been increasingly
shared over Twitter by Anonymous supporters.
However, attacks aimed to denial of service are not universally supported by
pro WikiLeaks groups. Barlow himself opposes such attacks, viewing them as
anti-free-speech.
"I support freedom of expression, no matter whose, so I oppose DDoS attacks
regardless of their target," he told Reuters. "They're the poison gas of
cyberspace ... All that said, I suspect the attacks may continue until Assange
is free and WikiLeaks is not under continuous assault."
'Snowball effect'
Alongside possible financial losses from sites being taken down, the potential
damage to firms is significant.
MasterCard has been mocked widely across the internet as users lampooned its
distinctive advertising slogans: "Freedom of speech: priceless. For everything
else, there's MasterCard".
"This proves without question the power at people's fingertips - that there is
high risk and vulnerability on the internet," John Walker, the chief technology
officer at cyber security company Secure Bastion, said.
MasterCard and other payment firms have severed ties with WikiLeaks in
recent days [Reuters]
While most denial of service attacks use so-called "botnets" to hijack other
computers to overload websites, cyber security experts said Wednesday's attacks
were different.
"Botnet" is a programme that overloads a website by sending huge numbers of
"information requests" to it.
Attackers were using their own computers, downloading software from Anonymous.
By Wednesday afternoon, that software had already been downloaded some 6,000
times.
"This whole episode is causing a snowball effect," Noa Bar Yosef, the senior
security strategist from Imperva, said. "The more attention it is receiving,
the more people who are joining the voluntary botnet to cause the DDoS."
WikiLeaks itself has also complained it has been under similar cyber attacks
since shortly before it released the documents last week. While it has largely
pointed to the United States and other governments as the source, some say
those attacks may have been carried out by third parties.
Whether the world has entered a "cyberwar" or "info war" is too soon to tell,
however, the battles currently being fought on the internet bear no comparison
to conventional warfare.
Al Jazeera is not responsible for the content of external websites
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