The Winds of WikiLeaks' War

WikiLeaks' Cablegate release has instigated a Web battle. On one side, high-profile organizations like credit card companies have refused to do business with the site; on the other, WikiLeaks supporters have carried out a series of reprisal DDoS attacks. Meanwhile, Apple makes new rules for the Mac App Store, a new study makes AT&T look bad, and Google makes plans for its various OSes.
The fallout from WikiLeaks' late-November release of hundreds of thousands of private U.S. State Department messages continues to spread, and it's grown well beyond the spewing of outraged rhetoric. Feeling pressure from the public and possibly the U.S. government itself, businesses are attempting to lay siege to WikiLeaks, cutting it off financially and technologically. Those who support what WikiLeaks has done have begun to fight back in their own way.

Meanwhile, Julian Assange, the site's founder, has been arrested on a Swedish sex crime allegation. But before turning himself in to authorities, he issued something of a threat: If any harm comes to him personally, or if WikiLeaks is somehow wiped off the Web, there will be consequences. He's sent a heavily encrypted file with a surprise inside to supporters around the world. It's locked up so tight that even sophisticated military computers can't crack it open. Assange has said that if he or WikiLeaks croaks, the key gets sent out as well, and the whole world gets to see the great big secret inside. Unless that happens, though, what's in that file is anybody's guess -- and the mystery is what makes it such a powerful life insurance policy.

Despite that threat, WikiLeaks has seen some outfits turn their backs on it. For instance, it came to light recently that Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) was hosting WikiLeaks for a period of time, and its cloud services were actually giving the site a good amount of protection from DDoS attacks. Soon after that news spread, though, Amazon kicked WikiLeaks off its cloud and washed its hands of the whole thing. That didn't seem to leave WikiLeaks vulnerable, though -- as much as its adversaries have tried, wiping the site off the Web completely may be damn near impossible at this point. It's been mirrored and spread so far and wide throughout the Internet that if anyone manages to shut down one instance, there are many more places still providing access.

It seems WikiLeaks has an army of supporters willing to fight back on its behalf. When companies like Visa (NYSE: V) and MasterCard (NYSE: MA) refused to process donations people were trying to make to WikiLeaks, a group called "Operation Payback" targeted them for DDoS attacks, temporarily knocking out their websites. This did not crash the credit card operators' ability to conduct transactions; it was more an act of protest that gummed up their front-facing websites, not the vital foundations underneath.

The group reportedly also tried to knock out Amazon's home page, which would have had much more severe implications for that company, since that's really where most of its business is actually done. But that blow apparently failed to connect.

For now, the war continues. High-profile companies are doing everything they can to distance themselves from WikiLeaks -- refusing support, declining to do business, pulling the plug on pro-WikiLeaks groups, so on. The site's supporters just keep pushing back, flooding those companies' servers to the point of collapse. That kind of attack likely won't kill off an entire business, but it can be costly, and the more famous the target, the more publicity the reprisal campaign receives. So who's next?

Article By Paul Hartsock adopted from http://www.technewsworld.com