Seeming Hack Attacks Hit Prosecutors, Opposing Counsel & Credit Card Co. re WikiLeaks Case
After news that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is being held without bail in the United Kingdom on a Swedish arrest warrant in a sex case, seeming hack attacks hit websites for Swedish prosecutors and the opposing counsel representing his accusers in the sex cases.
Mastercard Inc., PayPal and Swiss bank PostFinance, all of which have stopped providing service to the cyber-watchdog after an uproar over the site’s dump of confidential U.S. State Department documents, also may have been targeted for site slowdowns by supporters of WikiLeaks in recent days, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Denial-of-service attacks, in which servers are flooded to prevent them from displaying Web pages, appear to have been the modus operandi, the newspaper says.
Although the WSJ couldn’t reach WikiLeaks for comment, the newspaper notes a representative of the website said in a television interview today that companies that have cut services to WikiLeaks are “causing an outrage among the general public that actually might hurt their own business.”
Additional and related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Hackers Post Law Firm E-Mail, Exposing Defendant Data, Lawyer’s ‘Lambo’ Tastes”
Agence France-Presse: “PayPal says cut WikiLeaks account because of US position”
Corporate Counsel: “Companies Rocked by Pro-WikiLeaks Hack Attacks “
