MasterCard Disabled over WikiLeaks Revenge

By Richard Gibson
Dec 8 2010

Credit card giant MasterCard said this morning that their entire US wing was disabled after cyber attacks crippled the system in revenge for the denial of service for WikiLeaks.

This week MasterCard joined other financial companies in freezing the accounts for the infamous WikiLeaks. Like other companies, they are citing pressure from the US State Department in their decision to freeze the accounts. However, supporters of the WikiLeaks website enlisted the help of hackers to exact some measure of revenge.

Earlier in the morning MasterCard was reporting only minor outages across the US. But as the day continued the extent of the damage done by the attacks was discovered. The company is now reporting a total outage for all terminals in the US. They have also said that some of their payment systems in other parts of the world are currently non-operational.

Law enforcement officials have said that they will investigate the matter but they are not encouraged about their chances of catching any of the criminals. They issued a statement that showed that most hackers in the world are never caught because they are able to hide their tracks well.

Furthermore, the MasterCard issue is just one of the many companies that are suffering after turning off access to WikiLeaks. Visa has also reported wide-spread problems with their payment system and eBay owned Paypal said that they are currently under attack by several different sources.

Thus far all forms of donation payment systems have been shut down for WikiLeaks