WikiLeaks supporters’ cyberattack on Amazon.com appears unsuccessful [Updated]

By on Dec 9, 2010 at 11:20 AM
Internet December 9, 2010

Global hacker group “Anonymous” announced its plans Thursday morning to launch a cyberattack on Amazon.com. The attack is part of a larger endeavor called “Operation Payback,” which targets the websites of companies the group believes to have impeded WikiLeaks’ efforts to disseminate information. Recent targets include Visa and Mastercard.

Anonymous’ cyberattack on Amazon.com was scheduled to commence at 11:00am Eastern, yet Amazon.com has not experienced any downtime as of 11:20am. As a result, it appears as though the attacks on Amazon.com have been unsuccessful.

UPDATE: Shortly before noon, the group gave up on its plan to attack Amazon.com. Instead, it is currently focusing its efforts on Paypal, though the site has not yet gone offline.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Matthew-Williams/713122739 Matthew Williams

    They may have won the battle…

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Matthew-Williams/713122739 Matthew Williams

      /b/rothers!

      • mjrtom

        haha bunch of idiots.

        /b/umfuckers

    • sirpaul

      But they have lost the war!

      *Home Alone memories…:)*

  • http://twitter.com/homescrub homescrub

    Ha!

  • http://twitter.com/rwrife Ryan Rife

    Let see here, a relatively small group of people trying to flood a domain that accounts for the majority of the Internet’s bandwidth and computing power….good luck with that one.

  • http://jacobwg.com Jacob Gillespie

    I’d think it’d be hard to attack the infrastructure provider… lots of servers at their disposal. :)

    • Anonymous

      Amazon is not an infrastructure provider. And the attack will be mainly focused on their firewalls, not their servers. Amazon is as safe as a babe in their mother’s arms. Now I say we all start spamming Julian Assange’s email with ads for Viagra and dating sites! Watch him try to open his email when he gets out of jail!

      • mjrtom

        address?

  • http://depotwarehouse.net Ebonwumon

    If they need more ions they should drink some Gatorade.

  • Djalonsoc

    Maybe they got confused by the timezones… haha

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/John-Alexander-Thacker/597252629 John Alexander Thacker

    Odd strategy, attacking the company that hosted the servers but backed down in the face of government threats, but not any company that never hosted Wikileaks in the first place.

    Clearly the lesson for any corporation is to quietly refuse to host controversial sites that the government might target you over in the first place. Anonymous won’t target you if you refuse to ever host, but they will target you if government threats force you to stop.

  • lewis

    FAYUL !!

  • Steve Jobs

    what a bunch of douchebags

  • Homer

    Why would people take the time to take part in this? I feel sorry for the people that do, they probably have no idea what the inside of a vagina feels like.

    • Anonymous

      … says the guy who is a regular poster on a tech blog. ;-)

      Come on, man. The nerds are virgins jokes were over 7 years ago.

      • Troll + Zombie = Trombie

        Hitting too close to home?

      • Anonymous

        Such rapier-like wit. Really, I stand in awe of your sophomoric attempts at defending… what, exactly? He told a joke, I told a joke, and you are the White Knight?

        I said what’s true. The nerds are virgins thing is no longer new or amusing. Sorry if this is the first you’re hearing of it.

      • Anonymous

        The existence of /g/ disproves your notion.

      • Anonymous

        There’s an exception to every rule.

  • G. W. Bush

    anon will pwn, its just a question of time.

  • Ktdan1

    Good Job Amazon!!!!

  • http://twitter.com/markpalmos Mark Palmos

    wiki-tabloid wankers.
    The “freedom” they talk about is freedom to do what they want, scream and shout if they feel their freedom is being restricted, and then behave like facists in getting revenge on those they disagree with – who are also just exercising their freedom… nice… no thanks.

  • http://twitter.com/redigits Steve

    Dude, these guys are idiots. Why would you think that you could pull off a DDOS attack on a company that makes money from selling time on their servers? They obviously have plenty of capacity, so in the event of an issue (attack), they surely could pull some extra resources together and defeat a pathetic attack like that. Get a life.

  • lolcat

    You people are such sheep it’s ridiculous.

    Last time I checked wikileaks hadn’t done anything illegal.

    If that is the case (and it most likely is), then amazon, paypal etc had no business capitulating to the governments demands.

    Business should not adhere to government requests when the requests are not based in any sort of legality. We live in a country of laws, not of men (supposedly) and amazons take down of wikileaks at the behest of the government is no different than the mass internet surveillance various telecom companies provided to the government without warrants. When will the public grow a backbone.

    • D_Town_Tony

      actually, I’m pretty sure distributing confidential government documents is illegal.

      • Anonymous

        The thing is those documents should have never been deemed confidential to begin with. We the people have the right to know and Hillary Clinton should try spying on her husband instead of trying to get the U.S to spy on the U.N. Slick Willy has by far more dirt in his closet. (cough) loves the pussy (cough)

      • mjrtom

        haha you yanks and “your rights”. makes me chuckle every time.

    • KCRic

      So you don’t care if they release something that endangers lives and a nations well being, that’s ok with you? God forbid it’s illegal though. Don’t even try some counter ‘no one is in danger’ argument, check mate right here and I’ll do it again.

      • lolcat

        Anyone who rebuts a point without facts than says a rebuttal of his factless point without facts is check mate is clearly even dumber than they look.

    • Troll + Zombie = Trombie

      Nevermind the ethical argument about the actual leaks themselves… how the hades do you sit there and type about ‘country of laws’ when the Leaks-followers pretty much promote cyber-anarchy themselves??? You should be equally as disgusted with Anonymous as you are with the government(s) for reacting this way. Any credibility WikiLeaks has, Anonymous is abusing and flushing down the toilet.

    • Creekside

      It may turn out that it’s not illegal. It certainly is immoral. People’s lives have been put at risk.

    • 2JZ_NOS

      So if I’m able to have access to your credit report and bank accounts and I post the information on a website, then that’s not illegal right? Idiot.

      • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=503037611 Brett Smith

        If you are in a country that it is not illegal, then it is not illegal.

  • n8d

    So BGR is moderating comments now, eh?

    • Troll + Zombie = Trombie

      Only if you write the word f@660+, or something of the sort.

  • Tim

    Hitting Amazon is a lost cause, ESPECIALLY this time of year. They do realize that Amazon has 10x required capacity lying around in anticipation of the Christmas rush, right? That’s the whole point of EC2…

    They might as well try to take down google.

  • http://twitter.com/derrickisonline Derrick -Lex-

    Clearly these “hackers” aren’t versed in technology. They have 9,650 followers. Amazon has millions of hits and handles TONS of traffic. They should try doing something useful like doing a DDOS attack on a Justin Bieber site or something.

  • http://www.google.com/profiles/Ambrous.0 Aerilus

    bad reporting, at least give a little more history about the fact that the hacker group is a separate entity that started on 4chan and targeted anti-piracy sites until asked to shut down by the pirate party and have now started back up again because I am guessing they see the attacks on wiki-leaks as egregious offenses. There is no connection between wikileaks and the hacker group autonomous and this article suggest that connection by way of association

    • Killa

      It at no point implied any connection…

  • Anonymous

    An attack of this sort on Amazon is pretty futile. They’ve built one of the most solid web infrastructures out there – they’ve built an entire business out of the fact that they have a near bulletproof hosting system. Its like trying to DDoS Google…ain’t gonna happen, kiddies.

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