The Glade 4.0

And the media, feeling they have to embrace the Internet or become even more marginalized than they are, played it up. And the public, becoming even more immune to the latest "thing", yawned. TV news will go the way of the newspaper, the Internet will be full of whatever news you want to read that confirms your biases, and folks will become even more ignorant of what truly is going on than ever. Oh, and governments wil become even less transparent.

Way to go, wikileaks!

Do you think the situation is salvageable somehow?

Lets put it this way, if there was no positive reason for the company to have a website, they wouldn't have it.

Ergo there is and thus removal of access to that website causes that positive to be removed.

Thus we have an effective attack.

Not that much even. As attacks go, it was like shooting spitwads at a tank. No transactions were stopped, MC and Visa kept making their pennies per transaction...

Just a fart in a gale.

Actually a bunch of online transactions were stopped.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

Actually a bunch of online transactions were stopped.

Our core processing capabilities have not been compromised and cardholder account data has not been placed at risk. While we have seen limited interruption in some web-based services, cardholders can continue to use their cards for secure transactions globally

(Mastercard and Visa's transaction networks -- which run completely independently of their websites -- were unaffected.)

by Graham Cluley on December 9, 2010 | Comments (4)
FILED UNDER: Featured, Law & order, Malware

According to Dutch news reports, a 16-year-old boy has been arrested in connection with the distributed denial-of-service attacks that have been launched against a number of websites this week, including MasterCard and PayPal.

The attacks, which have made the headlines in the last couple of days, have seemingly been in support of the controversial WikiLeaks whistle-blowing site and its high profile founder Julian Assange.

Details are very sketchy, but it is reported that the unnamed youth - who was arrested in The Hague - is in police custody and is being interrogated by detectives from the Dutch National High-Tech Crime Team.

Computers have also been seized, and it appears that the authorities are not ruling out further arrests. Last night, Dutch broadcasters reported that the police visited the offices of LeaseWeb and EvoSwitch - two firms, believed to be providing internet services to the Anonymous group who have co-ordinated the attacks.

Of course, it is highly unlikely that the attacks are coming from just one part of the world.

As I said just earlier today, denial-of-service attacks are illegal - and you would be very foolish to participate in them, as the penalties can include lengthy jail sentences.

Wikileaks is not something most would want to be associated with in the US, due to their actions (like them or not). It's not "sucking the government cock" or "supporting censorship" or whatever anonymous internet armchair hero complex claptrap the hyperbole machine spits out next. It's a matter of business, plain and simple.

Also, "selling out their principles?" When these companies went into business, I'm pretty sure "ancillary support of a self-righteous, morally-questionable whistleblower website" wasn't in the mission statement.

I'm not against what Wikileaks does, per se, though I think they should exercise judicious restraint in what information they release (important stuff, yes; these cables, no). I also think Assange is a dick, and some of their releases are edited (there's your "censorship") to be taken out of context. But the bottom line is that I'm seeing a lot of romanticization of their actions, and at least half of it is unwarranted.

LOL. Suck it, ****.