Updates:
Operation Payback Launches DDoS Attack on Amazon
"According to a Tweet alleged to be from Operation Payback, the pro-WikiLeaks group has launched a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) on Amazon.com in retaliation for Amazon canceling hosting services for WikiLeaks last week..."
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The flurry of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks continues to escalate as hackivists around the world choose sides in the conflict.
Members of the pro-piracy group Operation Payback and the hacker social network 4chan, have engaged in multiple DDoS attacks against the websites of anyone they deem to be inhibiting WikiLeaks operations and cash-flow.
Targets have included PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, the Swedish Prosecutors, PostFinance Bank, EveryDNS, and others. Twitter is rumored to be next.
Of note is the attack against website of Senator Joe Lieberman, credited with supplying the political pressure that ousted WikiLeaks from the relative protection provided for a short time by Amazon's massive array of servers.
Also of note is the attack levied against the political action committee website of Sarah Palin after she issued statements that WikiLeaks' Julian Assange should be hunted like a terrorist.
Operation Payback also is reported to have been the subject of a denial of service attack, though no group has yet take credit for it. The attack was said to have intensified after the assault on Senator Lieberman's site began.
The denial of service attacks began in earnest with the initial attacks on the WikiLeaks website on Sunday, November 28. Anti-jihadi hacker The Jester claimed he initiated a non-distributed attack that day with his XerXes DoS tool.
A stronger attack was on the WikiLeaks sites began on the following Tuesday, and was likely distributed in nature.
Panda Labs has been doing an excellent job of tracking and updating detailed information on all of the attacks, which are summarized in this table:
For more details on each of these attacks, please visit the Panda Labs site, which is continually being updated and is the source for this table:
http://pandalabs.pandasecurity.com/tis-the-season-of-ddos-wikileaks-editio/