Arrest made over Wikileaks retaliation attacks

A Dutch teenager has been arrested in connection with denial of service (DoS) attacks against Visa and MasterCard, and is due to appear in court today.
 
Prosecutors in the country confirmed the arrest of the 16 year-old yesterday, after a band of hackers embarked on a campaign of retaliation against firms they believe are trying to bring down whistle-blowing site Wikileaks, Cnet.com reported.
 
A high-tech crime team swooped after it was found that some of the attacks originated in the Netherlands. The teenager has admitted his role in the onslaught and is due to appear in court today, FT.com stated.
 
It is the first arrest after the attacks disrupted traffic to Visa and MasterCard’s websites on Wednesday and Thursday.
 
The firms are among several companies to cut off support for online payments to Wikileaks over the past week.
 
However a separate DoS attack on Amazon today was abandoned after the hackers failed to circumvent the firm’s large server network, which it used to re-direct capacity to maintain services, cnet said.
 
Wikileaks has attempted to distance itself from the hackers actions, stating it has no contact with the group, named Anonymous, Deutsche Welle reported.