FBI targets Anonymous over WikiLeaks attacks

The FBI has seized a computer at a Texas business that's suspected of being used in a massive denial of service attack on PayPal and other sites that "suspended or froze WikiLeaks's accounts," the Smoking Gun reports.

From the story:

The FBI investigation began earlier this month after PayPal officials contacted agents and “reported that an Internet activist group using the names ‘4chan’ and “Anonymous” appeared to be organizing a distributed denial of service (“DDoS”) attack against the company,” according to an FBI affidavit excerpted here.

The PayPal assault was part of “Operation Payback,” an organized effort to attack firms that suspended or froze WikiLeaks’s accounts in the wake of the group’s publication of thousands of sensitive Department of State cables. As noted by the FBI, other targets of this “Anonymous” effort included Visa, Mastercard, Sarah Palin’s web site, and the Swedish prosecutor pursuing sex assault charges against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder.

(found via Neon Tommy)