IN SUPPORT FO WIKILEAKS, HACKERS STEP UP CYBER WAR

Supporters of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, gather outside the City of Westminster Magistrates Court in London where Julian Assange's case was heard

LONDON, U.K - Hackers stepped up their cyber war on Thursday in support of WikiLeaks as the embattled whistleblowers released memos showing the US views China as a "pernicious" competitor in Africa, lacking in morals.
After a group which has dubbed itself "Anonymous" vowed to intensify its "war of data" against Mastercard, Visa and other groups which have cut funding to the website, the Swedish government then came under attack.

• In an online chat with AFP, organisers of the group said thousands of volunteers were taking part in their defense of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, whom they described as a "free-speech martyr".
• "We started off with a small amount of users (below 50)," they said. "Now, we are at around 4,000."
• "We recruit through the internet, that means, everywhere: imageboards, forums, Facebook, Twitter... you name it, we're using it," they said.
• Anonymous members launched their first distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack on Saturday, taking down PayPal's blog, ThePayPalBlog.com, for at least eight hours.

Since then, they have taken down the websites of Visa, Mastercard and the Swiss Post Office bank for severing ties to WikiLeaks and the website of the Swedish prosecutor's office for pursuing Assange on allegations of sex crimes.
The latest apparent victims was the Swedish government, according to a report in the country's top-selling daily.

• Aftonbladet said the official government website, http://www.regeringen.se/, was offline for a few hours overnight to Thursday, publishing a screen shot which showed the server could not be reached. The site was working normally again later in the day.
• The paper also reported that WikiLeaks supporters had created a website bearing Swedish Justice Minister Beatrice Ask's name which then redirected users to WikiLeaks own site.
• Members of Anonymous also took aim on Wednesday at the websites of US conservative standard bearer Sarah Palin and US Senator Joe Lieberman, who called for US companies to withdraw technical support for WikiLeaks.
• Palin for her part described Assange as "an anti-American operative with blood on his hands."

Assange is currently behind bars in a south London prison. He handed himself into police on Tuesday after Sweden issued a European arrest warrant and he was then refused bail.

Source: AP