Hacktavists hit PayPal with £3.5m attack

Anonymous has launched an attack on PayPal after it announced the decision to block payments to Wikileaks.

The online transaction company was attacked by four member of the Anonymous group. The members called it 'Operation Payback'.

The prosecutor, Mr Patel said they used distributed denial of service, or DDoS, which flooded the targets computers with massive amounts of online requests. If you visited the sites under attack by the anonymous group, you'd be directed to a page with the message 'You've tried to bite the Anonymous hand. You angered the hive and now you are being stung'.

The four members are currently facing trial which is expected to last two weeks. 22 year old Christopher Weatherhead aka 'nerdo' is in the small group of cabal leaders in Anonymous. He pleaded not guilty to conspiring to impair the operation of computers between 1 August 2010 and 22 January 2011.

He also carried out attacks to MasterCard, Visa, Ministry of Sound, the British Recorded Music Industry and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry who also opposed internet piracy.

Ashley Rhodes, 27, Peter Gibson, 24, and an 18 year old who cannot be named for legal reasons have already pleaded guilty to the charge, all from the UK.

Mr Patel stated "It is the prosecution case that Christopher Weatherhead, the defendant, is a cyber-attacker and that he, and others like him, waged a sophisticated and orchestrated campaign of online attacks that paralysed a series of targeted computer systems belonging to companies to which they took issue with, for whatever reason, and those attacks caused unprecedented harm".

He said PayPal also had to pay for more software and hardware to defend against similar attacks in the future and he said the total cost to the firm was estimated at £3.5m.

You too can learn how to perform DDoS attacks and help companies like PayPal defend themselves against it. Become a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) and earn on average £42,750 in the UK (ITjobswatch.co.uk). As a CEH, job opportunities are endless, you can work for private companies, or even the government. With the likes of PayPal, Government sites around the world, Sony and Nintendo’s security being compromised, more and more companies are taking their security very seriously.