Targeted by ‘Anonymous,’ Bank of America Website Sees Intermittent Outages

[Hissyspit]

Source: The Nation/Raw Story

Targeted by ‘Anonymous,’ Bank of America website sees intermittent outages

By Stephen C. Webster
Monday, December 27th, 2010 -- 2:45 pm

The website of America's largest bank appeared to be suffering sporadic downtime on Monday afternoon amid a flurry of voluntary distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks from "hacktivist" group "Anonymous."

While the site was still available at time of this story's publication, reports were surfacing across Twitter noting infrequent outages. Raw Story was able to confirm, via two third party website verification services, the site's technical difficulties on Monday (with screenshots here and here). Greg Mitchell, who pens The Nation's media blog, also noted sporadic outages on Bank of America's domain.

"Anonymous" had declared a cyber war against Bank of America over its refusal to process payments for secrets outlet WikiLeaks, which had claimed it possessed a large trove of files from a hard drive belonging to one of the bank's executives. Other groups recently targeted for voluntary DDoS attacks included PayPal's blog, MasterCard Worldwide, Visa and Swiss bank PostFinance.

The attacks were a response to the financial community's decision to stop serving funds to WikiLeaks. PayPal, MasterCard and Visa have all suspended their business with the site.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/157333/blogging-wikileaks-news-views-monday-day-30

2:15  Still mixed reports on partial  BOA outage.  Meanwhile, Jeff Jarvis tweets: "The better retribution on BofA is a leak, not an attack."

1:35  Report from my tweeps: BOA site not loading at all for some, loading all the time for many others, some (like me) in-between.  Jeff Jarvis, for one, tweets in response to my query at 1:35:  "Dead to me."  Then, two minutes later, says it's "resurrected." This seems to be common experience.

- snip -

12:40   BOA site usually loads for me this past hour but occasonally...not.

12:10  Bank of America cyber attack allegedly underway now since noon.  Here's their running timer on how long since began.  Twitter feed: @Anony.Ops.   Hashtags seem to be #operationBOA  and  #payback



Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/targeted-anonymous-bank-america-website-sees-intermittent-outages/

---

Operation BOA planned in retaliation for Bank of America's announcement of refusal to handle WikiLeaks donation transactions

[Robb]

1. Just worked fine for me. nt

[Tess49]

7. Me, too. N/T

[FirstLight]

2. ponies for everyone?

wouldn't it be cool of they hacked all the accts with more than $250K and redistributed the cash to those with balances under $500?

I wouldn't mind at all! ;)

[CountAllVotes]

3. Time for Robin Hood to take charge?

:kick: & recommend.

[Autumn Colors]

8. I wouldn't be upset if they marked my mortgage as PAID IN FULL (nt)

[theizz]

18. no

No it wouldn't really be cool if they stole people's hard earned life savings and redistributed it to people that are either too lazy or too incompetent to earn their own money. Learn how to do something other than flip hamburgers and you won't have to hope for money to miraculously be given to you for no reason.

[superduperfarleft]

20. So what do you do for a living? n/t

[tomm2thumbs]

4. T O T A L L Y inaccessible - I get nuthin'

wow - that's a lot of computer power

[Joanne98]

5. LOL

[behrstar]

6. www.bankofamericasucks.com

is working fine.

www.bankofamericasucks.com

[xchrom]

9. recommend

[DeSwiss]

10. K&R

"Although, in a traditional sense, the swag the privileged class mountebanks have made off with isn't actually money; in reality, they are in possession of a cache of weightless pixels funneling through a matrix of computer systems. There is simply the illusion of money in the vaults of the nation's colossal banking entities. The only thing the financial elite didn’t steal for themselves was any sense of self-awareness, because if there was ever an honest audit of their ill-gotten assets the illusion would be exposed and the house of electronic cards would fly asunder." http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/111110a.html">~Phil Rockstroh, Angry Voters of a Decaying Empire

[dixiegrrrrl]

11. Why, yes, that is totally correct.

Which is why an effective hacker would do a lot of good moving a few pixels around.

edited to correct fumble finger syndrome.

[jwirr]

12. Holidays are over - seems we are back at war. I do not feel sorry

for the banks. They made this mess in this world and now they can live with it. If not for sites like this we would be completely helpless and at their mercy. The banks are damn lucky that these hackers are NOT messing with the pixels.

[Skittles]

13. LOL, someone has it in for BOA

I hope it makes customers leave

[lonestarnot]

14. Snicker.

:)

[femrap]

15. ...

:evilgrin:

[GreenTea]

16. GOOD! Banking with BofA they deseve every bit of bullshit possible and more....

B of A is multi-national corporate scum as bad and prey on the consumers as any corporation does, they invest in imperialism, war, pollution and pain...They feed off the weak and gobble up everything else to make themselves "too big to fail" via collude, monopolizing, outsourcing & downsizing.....using pure lies deceit and incompetence demand government money for bailouts and bankruptcy...and they'll do it again and again, while also stealing our tax dollars through government subsidies - BofA will fight & destroy all who want to regulate them, who try to stop BofA from lying cheating & stealing "legally" and BofA will spend as money as it takes to defeat anyone who get in their way....BofA is a huge contributor to the republican party.

Put money back in your community invest in small local banks that create jobs in your community and you can keep an eye where your money is being invested - if in weapons corporate polluters or elsewhere.

[mackerel]

17. Was it Wasp/Salander?

[Jakes Progress]

21. If you don't mind the collateral damage.

Some of the people I work with at the employment center have funds that are transferred to them through BOA. They have no choice in the matter. Some will be late with payments because of this.There are pension funds and retirement accounts lodged deep within the BOA bowels. Hundreds of thousands of people who don't have any choice in this.

Claiming the war is just and tsk-tsking the collateral damage is akin to bushco claiming moral reasons why the thousands of citizens in Iraq had to die. Yes those with fund managers and those with a choice might move their funding accounts, but the very poor will take the brunt while the big wigs at BOA won't sweat a thing. Maybe they will have to get by with an 84 instead of a 98 foot yacht.

If you want to do something about the fat-cat bankers, go after them. Get rid of Obama's wall-street buddies in the administration. Wikileaks has been careful to let the newspapers vet and clear its data so that there would not be damage to the innocent. This? Not so much so.

[LanternWaste]

22. The fat-cat banker's children are not innocent?

The fat-cat banker's children are not innocent? Are are you merely de-defining the word to better suit a convenience?

[Jakes Progress]

23. What the hell does your post have to to with mine?

Are you trying to say that ruining the lives of poor people with little to no choices in life, having their gas turned off, having their rent be late is okay? That as long as the rich have to settle for less than gold plated fixtures in the guest bath room at the lake house, any pain that the poor have to suffer is okay?

Or are you merely casting about for a way to find some way to defend that kind of attitude?

[metapunditedgy]

19. Come on people, this may sound funny, but BofA is an important contributor

to the election process.

http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=f03

We need Bank of America to stay healthy so that we can focus on bigger issues like improving HCR and DADT.

On edit: and keeping Sarah Palin out of office! Almost forgot.

[Vidar]

24. Good, now if they could only fry CitiBank as well!