Wikileaks battle sees hackers go after processors of credit card debt

By Marvin Milner on Dec 11th, 2010

Both MasterCard and Visa were recently targeted by the hacker calling itself Operation Payback, a splinter organization from the notorious group known as Anonymous, according to a report in the Christian Science Monitor. The attacks were in retaliation for what the group says was a betrayal of Wikileaks, founder Julian Assange and free speech.

MasterCard's corporate website went down for several hours earlier this week as thousands of hackers from all over the world flooded its servers, the report said. The next day, Visa was victimized by a similar attack that crippled the company's site. Paypal was also targeted.

There has been some concern over whether Operation Payback was able to breach MasterCard and Visa's internal databases and access data on consumer accounts. If they have, there is a possibility that some hackers could run up fraudulent credit card debt in another person's name.

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