Posted at 8:31 AM ET, 12/ 8/2010
4chan knocks MasterCard offline for WikiLeaks cutoff
By Rob Pegoraro

I hope you weren't planning on looking for a new credit card or finding an ATM at MasterCard's site this morning. The credit-card firm's Web presence has been largely unreachable for the past few hours after a coordinated attack intended to punish it for refusing to process donations to WikiLeaks.

Reports such as TechCrunch's post indicate the "denial of service" operation was coordinated through 4chan, a free-form message-board site that's been used to arrange numerous other sorts of Web mischief and sabotage, as well as a separate effort called Operation: Payback.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fas...rd_offlin.html

PayPal has admitted that the US Government was behind the company's decision to sever ties with whistle-blower site Wikileaks.
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/9005...an-assange.htm