Payback is always a bitch, especially when it comes from a collection of online hackers who are going against the grain and shooting down the companies who are denying service to WikiLeaks and founder, Julian Assange. The latest target: Amazon.com, as announced via Twitter under the name @Op_Payback. Operation: Payback is an ongoing campaign by Anonymous against major anti-piracy and anti-freedom entities. They announced that they would begin their attack on Amazon at 11 a.m. EST on Thursday and send the following email to editors at Mashable:
“I am part of the attack going on with Paypal, Mastercard and soon to be Amazon.
We will take Amazon down in less than one hour. Do you have any questions?
And get this straight – WE HAVE NO LEADER! WE ARE DOING THIS ALL INVOLUNTARY [sic]!!!
-Operation Anonymous”
In the last couple of days, the group has successfully taken down the Visa and Mastercard websites for a short time, along with Swiss Bank PostFinance, who cut ties and closed down Assange’s account.
According to the article: “We weren’t sure at the time whether or not this was a legit threat — both Facebook and Twitter closed accounts allegedly corresponding to Anonymous yesterday, including @Anon_Operation, which was supposedly leaking credit card info via Twitter prior to shutdown (MasterCard informs us that no credit numbers have been compromised, however).”
As accounts were being shutdown, more Twitter accounts were created, including @Op_Payback and @Anon_Operationn. @Op_Payback posted a guide yesterday that showed users how to become a part of a botnet that could be used to DDoS Amazon’s servers.
Mashable received another e-mail from a person claiming to be affiliated with Operation Payback saying:
“Make sure everyone knows that we are not 4CHAN. 4CHAN has nothing to do with this.
We are currently attacking Paypal.
Target api.paypal.com port 443 and it seems sluggish at this time.
Again, we are not 4CHAN, we are an anonymous involuntary group called AnonOps
With the Amazon attack, they are simply toooo big for us right now. Maybe at a later time we can try again with them.”
For a video from Anonymous about Operation: Payback, click here.
