Anonymous attaque MasterCard pour soutenir Wikileaks

Anonymous attaque MasterCard pour soutenir Wikileaks

Les attaques contre les grands groupes qui prennent des mesures contre Wikileaks se poursuivent. Dernière victime en date : MasterCard, qui a pris des mesures contre Wikileaks et a aussitôt été l’objet d’une attaque.

Le Guardian de ce 8 décembre 2010, donne quelques précisions sur cette attaque…

« The website of MasterCard has been hacked and partially paralysed in apparent revenge for the international credit card's decision to cease taking donations to WikiLeaks. A group of online activists calling themselves Anonymous appear to have orchestrated a DDOS (“distributed denial of service”) attack on the site, bringing its service at www.mastercard.com to a halt for many users.

» “Operation: Payback” is the latest salvo in the increasingly febrile technological war over WikiLeaks. MasterCard announced on Monday that it would no longer process donations to the whistleblowing site, claiming it was engaged in illegal activity.

» The group, which has been linked to the influential internet messageboard 4Chan, has been targeting commercial sites which have cut their ties with WikiLeaks. The Swiss bank PostFinance has already been targeted by Anonymous after it froze payments to WikiLeaks, and the group has vowed to target Paypal, which has also ceased processing payments to the site. Other possible targets are EveryDNS.net, which suspended dealings on 3 December, Amazon, which removed WikiLeaks content from its EC2 cloud on 1 December, and Visa, which suspended its own dealings yesterday.

» The action was confirmed on Twitter at 9.39am by user @Anon_Operation, who later tweeted: « WE ARE GLAD TO TELL YOU THAT http://www.mastercard.com/ is DOWN AND IT'S CONFIRMED! #ddos #wikileaks Operation:Payback(is a bitch!) #PAYBACK”»

Dans un autre texte de ce même 8 décembre 2010, le même Guardian, qui a pris contact avec le groupe The Anonymous, donne quelques précisions intéressantes sur cette première unité identifiée de la “cyber-insurrection”. L’intérêt des diverses précisions données est qu’il s’agit de groupes qui n’ont pas nécessairement les mêmes buts, les mêmes conceptions, mais qui, de plus en plus, se battent pour des principes dont le sens général est antisystème.

« A 22-year-old spokesman, who wished to be known only as “Coldblood”, told the Guardian that the group – which is about a thousand strong – is “quite a loose band of people who share the same kind of idéals” and wish to be a force for “chaotic good”.

»There is no real command structure in the group, the London-based spokesman said, while most of its members are teenagers who are “trying to make an impact on what happens with the limited knowledge they have”. But others are parents, IT professionals and people who happen to have time – and resources – on their hands.

»The group has gained notoriety for its attacks on copyright-enforcement agencies and organisations such as the Church of Scientology.

»Anonymous was born out of the influential internet messageboard 4chan, a forum popular with hackers and gamers, in 2003. The group's name is a tribute to 4chan's early days, when any posting to its forums where no name was given was ascribed to “Anonymous”. But the ephemeral group, which picks up causes “whenever it feels like it”, has now “gone beyond 4Chan into something biger”, its spokesman said.

»The membership of Anonymous is impossible to pin down; it has been described as being like a flock of birds – the only way you can identify members is by what they're doing together. Essentially, once enough people on the 4chan message boards decide that an issue is worth pursuing in large enough numbers, it becomes an "Anonymous" cause.

»The group counts the current campaign in support of WikiLeaks as “probably one of [its] most high profile yet”. The group gained notoriety more recently for a number of sustained assaults against the sites of US music industry body RIAA, Kiss musician Gene Simmons, and solicitors' firms involved in lawsuits against people suspected of illegal filesharing. In early 2008, Anonymous launched a campaign against the Church of Scientology, bringing down related websites and and promising to“ expel” the religion from the internet.

»“We're against corporations and government interfering on the internet," Coldblood added. "We believe it should be open and free for everyone. Governments shouldn't try to censor because they don't agree with it.” “Anonymous is supporting WikiLeaks not because we agree or disagree with the data that is being sent out, but we disagree with any from of censorship on the internet. If we let WikiLeaks fall without a fight then governments will think they can just take down any sites they wish or disagree with.”

»The spokesman said Anonymous plans to “move away” from DDoS attacks and instead focus on “methods to support” WikiLeaks, such as mirroring the site. “There's no doubt in [Anonymous members'] mind that they are breaking [the] law,” he said of the latest attacks. “But they feel that there's safety in numbers.”»

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