Tweets were still piling up Thursday morning, questioning the removal of an account for a group of anonymous hackers claiming responsibility for taking down two credit card giants in support of WikiLeaks and hinting at the hackers’ next possible target: Amazon.com.
The loose-knit hacktivist group known as “Anonymous,” rallied support Wednesday under the banner “Operation Payback” and for a time incapacitated websites belonging to MasterCard and Visa. The co-ordinated attacks came as retribution against the payment providers’ refusal to process donations for WikiLeaks. The site and its founder Julian Assange have been criticized by world governments for posting more than 1,000 leaked U.S. embassy cables, with thousands more on the way.
While both credit companies claimed the attack had no effect on their payment services, at least one instance of disrupted MasterCard payments surfaced Wednesday, according to the BBC.
A MasterCard corporate release on its website posted yesterday stated: “MasterCard has made significant progress in restoring full service to its corporate website. Our core processing capabilities have not been compromised and cardholder account data has not been placed at risk. While we have seen limited interruption in some web-based services, cardholders can continue to use their cards for secure transactions globally.”
The hackers now-suspended Twitter account, @Anon_Operation, tweeted out instructions Wednesday on how to overload both websites using relatively non-sophisticated distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
A Google cached page of the group’s deleted account shows a tweet instructing hackers to take aim at VISA’s site after successfully downing MasterCard’s earlier in the day: “TARGET: WWW.VISA.COM :: FIRE FIRE FIRE!!!” It was followed by a link leading to detailed instructions on how to take part in the DDoS.
Following the attacks, Operation Payback reported it’s Facebook page had been taken down on Twitter. The @Anonymous Twitter account has also disappeared, replaced with a, “This user does not exist,” message for anyone who searches it.
But the persistent hackers are apparently not giving up. Chatter in various Internet Relay Chat sites and on new Twitter accounts point to a possible attack on Amazon.com Thursday.
