FBI seizes Server,Wikileaks

This is the country that speaks of Freedom and State Terrorism.

The FBI has seized a server in Texas as part of its hunt for the groups behind the pro-WikiLeaks denial-of-service attacks launched in December against PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, and others, according to a report.

During a December 16 raid, agents seized a server at Tailor Made Services, a Dallas-based co-location, or server-hosting, facility, and copied two of its hard drives, according to The Smoking Gun Web site, which said it has obtained the FBI affidavit in support of a search warrant for the seizure.

It’s not clear what was found on the drives, The Smoking Gun reported, saying that search warrant records showed agents were authorized to seize material related to the attacks or to other illegal activities involving the groups Anonymous or 4chan.

Anonymous has claimed responsibility for deluging the Web sites of PayPal and others with data in order to bring the sites down. The attacks, the group says, were a response to actions taken by the site holders against WikiLeaks, after WikiLeaks publicly released a slew of confidential U.S. diplomatic cables. PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa all decided to prevent WikiLeaks from collecting donations via their financial networks. 4Chan has said it was behind an attack to shut down the sites for Swiss bank PostFinance and lawyers in Sweden prosecuting sex allegations against WikiLeaks front man Julian Assange. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20026908-38.html#ixzz19qN3SBhP

Related:

VANCOUVER — A global network accused of Internet attacks against perceived WikiLeaks opponents has a link to British Columbia.

One of the eight Internet protocol addresses — the unique identifiers assigned to computers — hosting a website used to dispense instructions on how to electronically attack the perceived opponents has been traced back to FranTech Solutions, based in the Victoria area, according to five pages of an FBI affidavit obtained by the Smoking Gun website.

Following WikiLeaks’ highly publicized release of diplomatic cables in November, U.S. companies including PayPal, Visa and MasterCard decided to suspend the whistle-blowing website’s accounts, citing the ongoing investigation against the organization.

In response, groups of WikiLeaks avengers — collectively going under the name “Anonymous” — organized distributed denial of service attacks against the companies.

DDoS attacks typically involve bombarding a server with external requests, therefore overwhelming it and making it unable to respond to legitimate requests.

The attackers, who described themselves as “average Internet citizens” organized and recruited via several Twitter accounts — such as (at)operation—anon, (at)anon—operation and (at)op—payback — until several of those accounts were suspended as well.http://www.globaltvbc.com/world/link+traced+wikileaks+avengers+smoking+website/4047105/story.html