Master Card Blog Hacked & defaced By Syrian Electronic Army

Master Card Payments Perspectives Blog Hacked & defaced By Syrian Electronic Army

It's became a very common scenario that hackers targets banks, payment gateway and other financial sectors. Sites like Paypal, Visa, Master Card were among those common victims who used to face massive round of cyber attacks. Past two years hacktivist managed to interrupt the service of those websites many times. Here also in the beginning of 2013 almost same situation took place, when the official blog of Master Card get hacked and defaced.  It was the Saturday evening when a hackers collective group named "Syrian Electronic Army" managed to breach and get access inside Master Card blog. I am sure that all our readers will be shocked after hearing the way of intrusion. In the platform of the blog, Master Card was using an older version of WordPress (Ver. 3.3.2) which has several critical vulnerabilities like XSS, file uploading, CSRF and so on. Exploiting those loopholes the hacker managed to get access inside the blog and defaced one of the page of the giant in international financial services company's blog. Though WordPress have released a security patch and also version 3.5, but it's quite unfortunate and shocking that Master Card did not even patched their older version for which their system get penetrated. It is truly unbelievable that sites like Master Card is so careless about basic security and counter measure of cyber attack. According to sources Syrian Electronic Army used  the CSRF exploit of WordPress which is said to be available on the Internet and allows an attacker to add a new administration user. This is a possible explanation of how the Syrian Electronic Army managed to hack and deface the blog. After this incident occurs Master Card immediately updated the version of WP and closed those back doors. Still the the defaced and cached version of the  blog can be viewed on Google’s Web Cache. 

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DDoS Attack From Anonymous Cost PayPal £3.5 Million of Damage

DDoS Attack From Anonymous Cost PayPal £3.5 Million of Damage 

The distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) from hacktivist Anonymous has cost PayPal more than €4.3 million. The attack which was named Operation Payback were initially aimed at companies that opposed internet piracy, but switched to companies like Mastercard, Visa and PayPal after they refused to process payments to WikiLeaks. After that attack PayPal -the global leader in online money transfer and payments has paid around £3.5 million defend and arm itself against such kind distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. In a report BBC said that more than one hundred skilled employees from eBay, PayPal's parent company, spent almost three weeks working on DDoS-attack-related issues and that PayPal had bought software and hardware to defend itself against further attacks. In all, the total cost of this work came to £3.5 million. This details have been revealed in a court case at Southwark Crown Court where a defendant, Christopher Weatherhead (studying at Northampton University when who allegedly took part in the campaign), is facing charges of conspiring to impair the operation of computers. He has pleaded not guilty to conspiring to impair the operation of computers between 1 August 2010 and 22 January 2011.

Sandip Patel, prosecuting, said the group caused PayPal "enormous economic harm". Mr Patel said they used distributed denial of service, or DDoS, which flooded the targets computers with enormous amounts of online requests. Target websites would crash and users would be directed to a page displaying the message: "You've tried to bite the Anonymous hand. You angered the hive and now you are being stung."

Mr Patel said: "This case, simply put, is about hackers who used the internet to attack and disable computer systems - colloquially described as cyber-attackers or vandals." He said Mr Weatherhead, who used the online name Nerdo, posted plans on an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel encouraging an attack on PayPal. 

He said PayPal was the victim of a series of attacks "which caused considerable damage to its reputation and loss of trade". 

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WikiLeaks Launches Vote WikiLeaks 2012 Donation Campaign (Presidential Election Intervention)

WikiLeaks Launches Vote WikiLeaks 2012 Donation Campaign (Presidential Election Intervention)

While Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are both rising their chances for the 2012 election as their respective party’s candidates who stood  in the coming US president election. In the mean time  WikiLeaks has launched "Vote WikiLeaks: 2012 Donation Campaign". Through this campaign WikiLeaks has threatened the pentagon once again.  According to the press release of WikiLekas on last Friday - Pentagon spokesman George Little demanded WikiLeaks destroy its publications, including the Iraq War logs which revealed the killings of more than 100,000 civilians. Little said: “continued possession by WikiLeaks of classified information belonging to the United States government represents a continuing violation of law”. The Pentagon also again “warned Mr Assange and WikiLeaks” against “soliciting” material from U.S. military whistleblowers. In response, WikiLeaks has decided to intervene in the U.S. election campaign.

The United States government claims Mr Assange and the WikiLeaks organization are within its jurisdiction. In reply, we place the Obama administration within our jurisdiction. All American school children are taught that being subject to laws without representation is an injustice. This is the backbone of the American Revolution. We claim our representation and now initiate a campaign to transform Democratic and Republican votes into economic and political support for WikiLeaks and its First Amendment values. This election day, do not vote for the Republican or Democratic parties. Instead, cast the only vote that matters. Vote with your wallet – vote for WikiLeaks.

The Democratic Party promised to open government. But instead it is building a state within a state, placing nearly five million Americans under the national security clearance system. It has classified more documents than any previous administration, classifying even the process used to decide who will live and who will be killed. The U.S. administration hurtles towards dystopia: secret laws, secret processes, secret budgets, secret bailouts, secret killings, secret mass spying, secret drones and secret detention without charge. The collapse of the Soviet Union could have led to the withdrawal of the U.S. security state, but without moral competition from another system it has grown unchecked to influence almost every American policy. Four more years in the same direction cannot be tolerated.

Watch WikiLeaks’s Campaign Video below:-

You can donate to WikiLeaks using a variety of easy methods, including workarounds for Visa, MasterCard and PayPal. These donations go to fund WikiLeaks’ publishing and infrastructure costs and our legal costs to fight the financial blockade. For Detailed information about the campaign click Here. 

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Donations Reopened- WikiLeaks Opens New Path Through Banking Siege

Donations Reopened- WikiLeaks Opens New Path Through Banking Siege  

After the court victory against the financial blockade imposed by Visa and MasterCard to WikiLeaks donation, now WikiLeaks is opening a new path  in its battle to breakthrough the banking siege. In early Wednesday morning, WikiLeaks announced  via its twitter feed while saying it could now accept donations through a French non-profit. 

In The Press Release Wikileaks Said:- 

"After almost two years of fighting an unlawful banking blockade by US financial giants VISA and MasterCard, WikiLeaks has announced it is back open for donations. After WikiLeaks’ publications revealing US war crimes and statecraft in 2010, US financial institutions erected a banking blockade against WikiLeaks wholly outside of any judicial or administrative process. The blockade came during a time of substantial economic growth for WikiLeaks but blocked more than 95% of donations, costing the organization in excess of USD 20 million.

The Wau Holland Transparency Reports for WikiLeaks’ finances, released today, illustrate the financial consequences of 18 consecutive months of economic censorship. For the year 2011, the blockade resulted in WikiLeaks’ income falling to just 21% of its operating costs. WikiLeaks has been forced to run on its cash reserves at the Wau Holland Foundation, which have diminished from EUR 800,000 at the end of December 2010, to less than EUR 100,000 at the end of June 2012. As the graph shows, WikiLeaks’ reserve funds will expire at the current austere rate of expenditure within a few months. In order to effectively continue its mission, WikiLeaks must raise a minimum of EUR 1 million immediately.

Against this background, WikiLeaks is launching a new payment gateway, designed to work around the blockade. The French credit card system, Carte Bleue, is coupled with the VISA/MasterCard system globally. VISA and MasterCard are contractually barred from directly cutting off merchants through the Carte Bleue system. The French non-profit FDNN (Fund for the Defense of Net Neutrality- Fonds de Défense de la Net Neutralité) has set up a Carte Bleue fund for WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks advises all global supporters to make use of this avenue immediately before VISA/MasterCard attempts to shut it down.

However, WikiLeaks and FDNN are ready for the fight. Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’ founder said: "We beat them in Iceland and, by God, we’ll beat them in France as well. Let them shut it down. Let them demonstrate to the world once again their corrupt pandering to Washington. We’re waiting. Our lawyers are waiting. The whole world is waiting. Do it."

NEW LINKS FOR DONATION:-

FDNN-WikiLeaks Payment Gateway (Donate here): https://shop.wikileaks.org/donate#dccard

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WikiLeaks Get Court Victory, Donations By Visa & MasterCard May Resume Soon

WikiLeaks Get Court Victory, Donations By Visa & MasterCard May Resume Soon

Court victory to WikiLeaks, this Thursday an Icelandic court declared victory in the first round of its campaign against the financial blockade imposed by Visa and MasterCard to WikiLeaks donation. Judge ruled 'Valitor' -Icelandic payments processor to reopen a gateway handling Visa and MasterCard donations to Wikileaks. The court ruled that Valitor must resume processing payments for Wikileaks' partner DataCell within two weeks. If Valitor doesn't, then it must pay a fine of 800,000 Icelandic kronur (USD$6,200) per day until the company complies with the ruling, the Reykjavik district court ruled. 

WikiLeaks says that the ensuing blockade has led to a 95 percent fall in revenue, something which founder Julian Assange says has forced him to focus on fundraising at the expense of his site's publication work.

The judgment, handed down by Reykjavik District Court, is "a very important milestone in our campaign," WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said in a telephone interview. Lawsuits remain active in Denmark and in Belgium, he said, but the Icelandic win was "a small but very important step in fighting back against these powerful banks."

DataCell CEO Andreas Fink said the court had dismissed Visa's argument that DataCell should not be allowed to process donations for third parties.

"The verdict is an important one as the court had to rule on the conditions of the contracts we had with a payment processor which indirectly imposes Visa general rules on us," said Fink. 

Still neither Visa Inc. nor MasterCard Inc. immediately returned emails seeking comment on the judgment.

-Source (Newsday & PCW)

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