WikiLeaks Cyber War

KOMPAS.com - The controversy surrounding WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has started a heated cyber war between Mr Assange's supporters and a group of patriotic Americans.

And a Sydney member of the pro-WikiLeaks cyber attackers has revealed he is disillusioned with the group, saying they "couldn't organise a piss-up in a pub".

Last week, a group of loose-knit cyber attackers dubbed Anonymous took down the websites of MasterCard, Visa and PayPal in retaliation for the companies' refusal to process WikiLeaks-related transactions following pressure from US politicians.

The attacks were named "Operation Payback" but now a group of American nationalists is counter-attacking Anonymous under the banner "Operation Fightback".

"For the continued defense of our nations (sic) people & businesses," the tagline of the new group's Twitter page, @AnonymousDown, reads, above a link to a YouTube clip of "God Bless the USA".

"Malicious tactics being employed by the Anonymous movement will not be tolerated ... freedom of speech is one thing, personal and corporate infrastructure is another," the operator of the Twitter page wrote.

Using the same methods as Anonymous - distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which flood servers with millions of requests - the Operation Fightback group has been able to seriously disrupt Anonymous's operations and prevent it from launching new attacks.

Anonymous members used a software application called Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) to launch their attacks, which received its instructions on which targets to attack from an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel.

A Sydney-based member of Anonymous, who spoke to this website last week, said today that the IRC server used by the group had been knocked offline by the Operation Fightback counter-attackers. This had prevented them from launching new attacks.

"It seems to be going to hell in a bucket," he said in a phone interview.