Operation Avenge Assange

In December 2010, WikiLeaks came under intense pressure to stop publishing secret United States diplomatic cables. Corporations such as Amazon, PayPal, BankAmerica, PostFinance, MasterCard and Visa either stopped working with or froze donations to WikiLeaks due to political pressures. In response, those behind Operation Payback directed their activities against these companies for dropping support to WikiLeaks. Operation Payback launched DDoS attacks against PayPal, the Swiss bank PostFinance and the Swedish Prosecution Authority. On 8 December 2010, a coordinated DDoS attack by Operation Payback brought down both the MasterCard and Visa websites. On 9th December 2010, prior to a sustained DDoS attack on the Paypal website that caused a minor slowdown to their service, Paypal announced on its blog that they would release all remaining funds in the account of the Wau Holland Foundation that was raising funds for WikiLeaks, but would not reactivate the account. Regarding the attacks, WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson denied any relation to the group and said: “We neither condemn nor applaud these attacks. We believe they are a reflection of public opinion on the actions of the targets.” On the same day, a 16-year-old boy was arrested in The Hague, Netherlands, in connection with the distributed denial-of-service attacks against MasterCard and PayPal. The boy was an IRC operator under the nickname of Jeroenz0r.
On 10 December 2010, The Daily Telegraph reported that Anonymous had threatened to disrupt British government websites if Assange were extradited to Sweden. Anonymous issued a press release in an attempt to clarify the issue.