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Wednesday, December 08, 2010

The Unorganized Cyber-Militia

The non-state intelligence outfit WikiLeaks has inspired sympathetic hackers to wage war on perceived enemies of Assange and WikiLeaks:

WikiLeaks supporters struck back Wednesday at perceived enemies of the site and its jailed founder Julian Assange, launching hacker attacks against MasterCard, Swedish prosecutors, a Swedish lawyer and a Swiss group that froze Assange's bank account.

So-called "hacktivists" operating under the label "Operation Payback" claimed responsibility in a Twitter message for causing technological problems at MasterCard, which pulled the plug on its relationship with WikiLeaks on Tuesday.

This is the equivalent of committing acts of physical sabotage. How do we apply the rules of war to such cyberbooters?