Wikileaks' Money Problems Could Trigger On-line Attacks on Banks and Credit Card Companies
WikiLeaks says it is about to run out of money because of a "blockade" by Visa (V), MasterCard (MA) and other U.S. firms. Those businesses should expect lot of attacks from hackers unhappy about this.
Founder Julian Assange announced today, "If WikiLeaks does not find a way to remove this blockade, given our current levels of expenditure we will simply not be able to continue by the turn of the year." He was referring to the refusal by Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Bank of America (BAC) and Western Union (WU) to process donations for WikiLeaks. The companies acted in 2010 when the website published sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables. Shortly after that Anonymous began a series of DoS attacks they called "Operation Payback," aimed at bringing down the websites for these companies.
(WikiLeaks own servers were hit with DoS attacks prior to the documents' release. No group claimed credit for those attacks.)
Although the attacks against the banks and payment processors didn't accomplish much, hackers' capabilities have shown signs of improving recently. Bank of America's website experienced problems for more than a week after it announced it was imposing new fees on customers. Although the bank later said the slowdown was due to a website upgrade, the timing still seems rather suspicious.
Assange has accused Bank of America and the other companies of maintaining "an arbitrary and unlawful financial blockade" against the site. That action had cut the site's funding by 95 percent, he said. In July, Assange filed an anti-trust complaint against Visa and MasterCard in the EU. No action has been taken on that complaint.
"The blockade," Assange said, "is outside of any accountable, public process. It is without democratic oversight or transparency. The US government itself found that there were no lawful grounds to add WikiLeaks to a US financial blockade. But the blockade of WikiLeaks by politicized US finance companies continues regardless."
For now WikiLeaks is suspending operations in order to devote all of its time to fundraising. The group has appeared to be in financial distress for awhile. In a recent statement about legal problems concerning a book deal signed by Assange, the group said it did not have enough money to hire a lawyer.
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