MasterCard.com brought down in apparent Wikileaks-motivated internet attack

MasterCard’s website was knocked offline earlier today following a WikiLeaks-inspired internet attack against it.

In what appears to be the latest salvo by hactivists, the mastercard.com website is thought to have suffered from a denial-of-service attack – where an internet site is bombarded with a large amount of traffic making it impossible for genuine visitors to access it.

A Twitter user called ibomhacktivist seems to be taking responsibility for the attack, and links the action to the WikiLeaks-inspired attack on MasterCard by the Anonymous group last year.

MasterCard.com DOWN!!!, thats what you get when you mess with @wikileaks @Anon_Central and the enter community of lulz loving individuals :D

MasterCard angered the hacktivist community after it suspended the ability for WikiLeaks to accept payments via the firm. Police…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

Found this article interesting? Follow Graham Cluley on Twitter or Mastodon to read more of the exclusive content we post.

Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.