Hacker: 2nd attack on Mastercard is payback for Wikileaks denial

The website of card giant Mastercard was attacked again Tuesday, according to computer security firm Sophos and an online news hub for hackers. Twitter user “Ibomhacktivist" claimed responsibility for the attack. Sophos said the Mastercard website was flooded with volumes of traffic — known as a denial-of-service or DOS attack — making it hard for the firm’s clients to engage in online transactions. “Ibomhacktivisit" said its assault was payback for Mastercard’s move to suspend the ability of Wikileaks to accept donations. "MasterCard.com DOWN!!!, thats what you get when you mess with @wikileaks @Anon_Central and the enter community of lulz loving individuals :D," the hacker said in the Twitter message. Wikileaks is an online repository of classified and private files from anonymous sources. Its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, has been the subject of international investigations following disclosures of secret documents and other files. Mastercard stopped accepting donations for Wikileaks in December 2010. The time stamp on the tweet showed it was posted at about 7 p.m. Manila time. Mastercard’s site was giving timeout error messages until shortly after 9 p.m. The website was up again and back to normal by past 9:22 p.m. Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Cluley said MasterCard angered the hacktivist community when it cancelled donations to Wikileaks by credit card. Hackers’ online news hub, The Hacker News, said it will be tough to track the perpetrators. "It’s irrelevant if the IPs are traceable or not. It will not be possible for any police or court to differentiate between the users who volunteered to the task and the ones who had their computer hijacked (with a virus)," The Hacker News said in a post. — ELR/VS, GMA News