WikiLeaks Revenge Attack Threatens Cameron’s Online Aspirations

Prime minister Cameron’s cyberwar preparedness may be tested earlier than he thought as Operation:Payback turns its attentions towards Britain. The threatened extradition of Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’ editor-in-chief, has spurred the Anonymous Operation’s rag-tag hacktivist army into action.

The Operation:Payback virtual war being waged by WikiLeaks’ supporters rumbles on and finds new targets to harass. The British Government has been singled out for a concerted denial of service attack if the extradition is approved.

Single Domain Means A Single Target

If the attack succeeds and the government site becomes unreachable it would cast a shadow over Cameron’s plans to switch essential public services to online access. It may also trigger a rethink of the plans laid down by Martha Lane Fox, the government’s digital champion, to bring all of the government’s websites into a single domain.

Mastercard found, to its cost, that all of its country sites were blocked because they all emanated from its solitary mastercard.com domain. The attack on Visa was damaging but limited to the main Visa.com site and VisaEurope.com.

If Assange is extradited, it could have a secondary consequence because Assange posted an encypted file, named “Insurance” on the WikiLeaks site. This was downloaded by “hundreds of people”, WikiLeaks claimed, but only Assange knows the encryption key. The password is reported to be a 256 character code which will be released if Assange is imprisoned.

It is believed that the file contains cables relating to the detainment centre at Guantanamo Bay and revelations about the BP oil disaster in the Mexican Gulf.

First Payback Arrest

In Holland, the first of what could be many arrests has been made of one of the hacktivists. The Dutch police have not released details other than the youth is aged 16 years and believed to have joined the attack on PayPal and Mastercard. He has not been named in the report.

In the UK, police have admitted that they have an ongoing investigation into the Anonymous group but have not made any arrests.