An anonymous cyber activist group revealed it will be targeting attacks at various organisations, including Twitter, for censoring WikiLeaks discussions.
This is following WikiLeak's controversial release of sensitive government documents, some relating to the war in Afghanistan.
According to global IT vendor Panda Security, the cyber group responsible for deploying a series of attacks against copyright societies worldwide is now performing further attacks in defence of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Panda claims the group has already threatened Twitter for allegedly suppressing WikiLeaks discussions (tweets with the hashtag #wikileaks), even though these threats have not yet materialised.
A statement has been circulated by the cyber activist group indicating that it has no affiliation with WikiLeaks or its founder, but shows its full support of Assange, as “they fight for the same reason: transparency and anti-censorship”.
Panda confirms that it has so far detected three attacks. The first two attacks hit electronic payment giant PayPal and its blog for suspending donations to WikiLeaks, and have resulted in over eight hours of total downtime.
According to Panda, the third attack affected the PostFinance Bank for freezing Assange's account and has already resulted in more than 11 hours of downtime. Panda says users turned to Twitter to ask cyber activists to stop the attack for at least 10 minutes to be able to use the bank's online services.
According to the security company, last Monday, the anonymous cyber activist group's own Web site suffered a series of DDOS attacks that rendered it inactive for some hours.
The cyber activist group says it is planning to continue with its campaign in favour of Julian Assange by attacking any institution which tries to silence or discourage WikiLeaks.
Share