MasterCard.com Hacked by Wikileaks Hacktivists

Mastercard.com has been attacked by Wikileaks.ch supporters, sending the message 'Freedom of speech is priceless, for everything else there's Mastercard', after the credit card company cut off Wikileaks.ch from donations.

As of around 1pm Cyprus time (GMT +2 / December 8th) the website is slow to load or does not load at all.

Since Julian Assange's Wikileak.ch site started to release confidential cables from US embassies around the world, companies such as Amazon.com, Paypal.com and Mastercard have stopped their services to the whistleblowers.

In retaliation, hacktivists who support Wikileak's actions have started attacking these companies using 'bots' - which are programming scripts that carry out various tasks, including overloading servers. The hacking attacks are called 'Operation Payback'.

As the Internet hacking war builds up a head of steam, Assange is currently in a London jail cell awaiting further court appearances in his fight to prevent British authorities from extraditing him to Sweden for questioning on allegations he sexually molested two women there.

In Cyprus, a JCC credit card processor spokesman said that none of Mastercard's core systems had been hacked into, so nobody's card data is at stake.

"No cards have been compromised, it was just their website being flooded with queries by hackers" he said in comments to CyprusNewsReport.com.

Hacking is described as unauthorised use of computer and network systems and was originally used to describe a particularly gifted software programmer. The term is distinct from the word 'cracker' which describes a programmer who maliciously breaks into secure computer systems in order to damage them or steal personal information like banking passwords.