Visa is under DDoS attack
Getting "An error occurred while processing your request." error at visa.com right now. I wonder if their payment gateways will suffer like mastercard's did.
The primary targets include MasterCard (which was hit earlier today) and Visa, who refused to process donations to Wikileaks. The Swedish Prosecution authority is apparently also on the list.
Although these types of DDoS attacks (they are using the Low Orbit Ion Cannon tool available at https://github.com/NewEraCracker/LOIC/ ) do not affect cardholder data, it will render legitimate users completely unable to login to their merchant accounts.
I'd wager that the Visa network engineers would segregate all customer transactions. Processing would take place outside their general www/office/etc traffic.
What, do they expect people to say, "Oh why you're right. Wikileaks is a good thing and we should totally support it. Thank you for opening my eyes by horrendously disrupting my business for the day." That's asinine!
It may be asinine, but many political demonstrations are.
We live in a economy of attention, and right now, the attack against Visa and Mastercard has been in every newspaper, in every tv channel, and is overflowing the internet. This kind of press is priceless in this kind of economy.
What will this publicity accomplish, though? I'm rambling and speaking out of my thoughts (no facts), but I imagine:
Those for Wikileaks and what it stands for will be: a) encouraged to take up arms and fight b) appalled by the actions and, while agreeing with the stance, disapprove of the strikes.
Those against Wikileaks will likely use this assault as more reason to fuel their opposition: "look at what those terrorists that support Wikileaks are doing!"
But how will this affect those who are on the fence?
Of course, from further contemplation, perhaps what this will do is bring Wikileaks further into the people's eyes and start conversations. The conversations may leave "look at what Anonymous is doing" to "look at what the government is doing to Wikileaks? Is this right? Is this wrong? What if this begins to happen elsewhere?" And when questions like that are asked, people begin to take sides, and when people take sides, some of them join the fight.
Perhaps that is the final goal of Anonymous... or perhaps I'm giving them too much credit.
"You get your freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get it. Then you'll get it. It's the only way you'll get it."
— Malcolm X
Not that I share those ideas, not even remotely, but I respect the people that fight for their rights.