An expert has told SBS distributed-denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) are illegal as a 'cyber-war' intensifies after hackers targeted the websites of credit giants Visa and Mastercard.
Just hours after MasterCard's website was disabled by WikiLeaks supporters, Visa.com went down as well.
Via its Twitter account (@Anon_Operation), Anonymous, an activist hacker group, claimed responsibility for the denial of service attack--part of "Operation Payback"--that brought down Visa.com.
Anonymous explains that Operation Payback is "an ongoing campaign by Anonymous against major anti-piracy & anti-freedom entities."
And the battle moved into the commercial sphere overnight with allegations the US government is pressuring companies to stop dealing with WikiLeaks.
Online payment service Paypal is the first to admit it froze the WikiLeaks account based on the US government's stance against WikiLeaks.
The Paypal move, as well as Visa and Mastercard's withdrawal of services, are a problem for WikiLeaks because it relies on many small donations to keep going.
The host of the Risky Business information security podcast, Patrick Gray, has explained to SBS how 'Operation Payback' is orchestrated.
"Basically, people who wish to participate in the attack can download and install a bit of software that is designed to flood a target with traffic so they install of bit of software on their computer and that software connects to a controlled channel controlled by this Anonymous group, if you so want to call them that", Mr Gray told SBS.
"Then their channel starts instructing their computer to start bombarding their target with huge amounts if traffic and because the site is busy dealing with huge amounts of traffic it can no longer deal with legitimate requests."
"So it's really just taking down sites by group force," he told SBS.
Mr Gray said such attacks are certainly illegal.
"It is not legal to try to take someone down by taking them off the internet. It is the sort of thing police tries to make arrests on in high profile cases. Sometimes they know where to turn up, sometimes they can't."
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