"Operation Payback" is evolving, as attackers have initiated a fax-based campaign against companies that severed ties with WikiLeaks.
Hacktivists from the group "Anonymous" are urging members to send faxes to Amazon, MasterCard, PayPal, Visa, Tableau Software, and Moneybookers. This action aims to create a fax-based version of denial-of-service attacks, according to Netcraft. Over the past few days, the group has launched distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against websites of several companies and organizations, including MasterCard and Visa.
Paul Mutton from Netcraft blogged, "This latest campaign by the Anonymous group is analogous to the distributed denial of service attacks it has been carrying out against websites over the past week. In essence, this has turned into a DDoS attack against fax machines. The group started the fax-attacks on Dec. 13 at 13:00 GMT and published a list of target fax numbers in their call to arms."
"The Anonymous collective is being encouraged to send faxes of random WikiLeaks cables, letters from Anonymous, Guy Fawkes, and the WikiLeaks logo to the target fax numbers all day long," he continued. "It is not clear how many people are taking part in the attacks, but an IRC channel set up to provide information about the campaign contained 73 users just a few hours after the fax-attacks started."
However, Anonymous has also found itself under attack for supporting WikiLeaks. Mutton wrote, "Many users were knocked off its IRC network after its servers came under attack on Dec. 13," adding that the anonops.eu domain, which was used to announce the locations of IRC servers and current attack targets, also came under attack.
