Hackers Attack Those Seen as WikiLeaks Enemies

Hackers Attack Those Seen as WikiLeaks Enemies

By JOHN F. BURNS and RAVI SOMAIYAPublished: December 8, 2010

LONDON — In a campaign that had some declaring the start of a  
“cyberwar,” hundreds of Internet activists mounted retaliatory attacks  
on Wednesday on the Web sites of multinational companies and other  
organizations they deemed hostile to the WikiLeaks antisecrecy  
organization and its jailed founder, Julian Assange.

Within 12 hours of a British judge’s decision on Tuesday to deny Mr.  
Assange bail in a Swedish extradition case, attacks on the Web sites  
of WikiLeaks’s “enemies,” as defined by the organization’s impassioned  
supporters around the world, caused several corporate Web sites to  
become inaccessible or slow down markedly.
Targets of the attacks, in which activists overwhelmed the sites with  
traffic, included the Web site of MasterCard, which had stopped  
processing donations for WikiLeaks; Amazon.com, which revoked the use  
of its computer servers; and PayPal, which stopped accepting donations  
for Mr. Assange’s group. Visa.com was also affected by the attacks, as  
were the Web sites of the Swedish prosecutor’s office and the lawyer  
representing the two women whose allegations of sexual misconduct are  
the basis of Sweden’s extradition bid.

The Internet assaults underlined the growing reach of self-described  
“cyberanarchists,” antigovernment and anticorporate activists who have  
made an icon of Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian whom they  
consider one of their own.

The speed and range of the attacks also appeared to show the  
resilience of the backing among computer activists for Mr. Assange,  
who has appeared increasingly isolated in recent months amid the furor  
stoked by WikiLeaks’s Web site posting of hundreds of thousands of  
secret Pentagon documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mr. Assange has come under renewed attack in the past two weeks for  
posting the first tranche of a trove of 250,000 secret State  
Department cables that have exposed American diplomats’ frank  
assessments of relations with many countries, forcing Secretary of  
StateHillary Rodham Clinton to express regret to world leaders and  
raising fears that they and other sources would become more reticent.

The New York Times and four other news organizations last week began  
publishing articles based on the archive of cables made available to  
them.

In recent months, some of Mr. Assange’s closest associates in  
WikiLeaks abandoned him, calling him autocratic and capricious and  
accusing him of reneging on WikiLeaks’ original pledge of impartiality  
to launch a concerted attack on the United States. He has been  
simultaneously fighting a remote battle with the Swedish prosecutors,  
who have sought his extradition for questioning on accusations of  
“rape, sexual molestation and forceful coercion” made by the Swedish  
women. Mr. Assange has denied any wrongdoing in the cases.

American officials have repeatedly said that they are reviewing  
possible criminal charges against Mr. Assange, a step that could lead  
to a bid to extradite him to the United States and confront him with  
having to fight for his freedom on two fronts.

The cyberattacks in Mr. Assange’s defense appear to have been  
coordinated by Anonymous, a loosely affiliated group of activist  
computer hackers who have singled out other groups before, including  
the Church of Scientology. Last weekend, members of Anonymous vowed in  
two online manifestos to take revenge on any organization that lined  
up against WikiLeaks.

Anonymous claimed responsibility for the MasterCard attack in Web  
messages and, according to one activist associated with the group,  
conducted waves of attacks on other companies during the day.

The activist, Gregg Housh, who disavows a personal role in any illegal  
online activity, said in a telephone interview that 1,500 supporters  
had been in online forums and chat rooms organizing the mass “denial  
of service” attacks. His account was confirmed by Jose Nazario, a  
senior security researcher at Arbor Networks, a Chelmsford, Mass.,  
firm that tracks malicious activity on computer networks.

Almost all the corporate Web sites that were attacked appeared to be  
operating normally later on Wednesday, suggesting that any economic  
impact was limited. But the sense of an Internet war was reinforced  
when Netcraft, a British Internet monitoring firm, reported that the  
Web site being used by the hackers to distribute denial-of-service  
software had been suspended by a Dutch hosting firm, Leaseweb.

A sense of the belligerent mood among activists associated with the  
Anonymous group was given when one contributor to a forum the group  
uses, WhyWeProtest.net, wrote of the attacks: “The war is on. And  
everyone ought to spend some time thinking about it, discussing it  
with others, preparing yourselves so you know how to act if something  
compels you to make a decision. Be very careful not to err on the side  
of inaction.”

Mr. Housh acknowledged that there had been online talk among the  
hackers of a possible Internet campaign against the two Swedish women  
who have been Mr. Assange’s accusers in the Swedish case, but he said  
that “a lot of people don’t want to be involved.”

A Web search showed new blog posts in recent days in which the two  
women, identified by the Swedish prosecutors only as Ms. A. and Ms.  
W., were named, but it was not clear whether there was any link to  
Anonymous. The women have said that consensual sexual encounters with  
Mr. Assange became nonconsensual when condoms were no longer in use.

The cyberattacks on corporations and others Wednesday were seen by  
many supporting them online as a counterstrike against the United  
States. Mr. Assange’s online supporters have widely condemned the  
Obama administration as the unseen hand coordinating efforts to choke  
off WikiLeaks by denying it financing and suppressing its network of  
computer servers.

Mr. Housh, an American activist, described Mr. Assange in an interview  
as “a political prisoner,” a common view among WikiLeaks supporters  
who have joined Mr. Assange in condemning the Swedish accusations of  
sexual abuse as part of an American-inspired “smear campaign.”

Another activist used the analogy of the civil rights struggle for the  
cyberattacks.

“Are they “disrupting business?” a contributor using the name Moryath  
wrote in a comment on the slashdot.org technology Web site. “Perhaps,  
but no worse than the lunch counter sit-ins did.”
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