Sarah Palin Cyber-Attacked by Wikileaks Supporters in 'Operation Payback'

SarahPAC.com, the Palins' personal credit cards targeted
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Jake Tapper at Political Punch reports that Gov. Palin told ABC News in an email today her political action committee's website and personal credit card information were cyber-attacked by Wikileaks supporters:

Hackers in London apparently affiliated with “Operation Payback” – a group of supporters of Julian Assange and Wikileaks – have tried to shut down SarahPac and have disrupted Sarah and Todd Palin’s personal credit card accounts.

“No wonder others are keeping silent about Assange's antics,” Palin emailed. “This is what happens when you exercise the First Amendment and speak against his sick, un-American espionage efforts.”

Palin has criticized Wikileaks founder Assange, writing on Facebook that his “past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?...Assange is not a 'journalist' any more than the 'editor' of al-Qaeda's new English-language magazine Inspire is a 'journalist.’ He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands."

Activist Gregg Housh told the New York Times "that 1,500 people were on online forums and chatrooms including Anonops.net, mounting mass and repeated 'denial of service' attacks on sites that have moved against Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks in recent days."

A cached page from Anonops.net shows Palin's site as a suggested target.

A SarahPAC.com technical aide said that “on our server log this morning it showed the attacks coming from a browser identified as wikileaks.org. It has since spread to others entitled ‘anonymous.’”

Added SarahPAC aide Rebecca Mansour, “the governor voiced her opinion knowing full well that she was speaking out against a shady disreputable organization with no regard for laws or human life. This is how they operate. The world should not be intimidated by them.”

Mansour pointed out the hypocrisy of Wikileaks supporters who claim to be “in favor of free speech yet they attack Sarah Palin for exercising her free speech.” She added that SarahPAC.com was not harmed because Gov. Palin’s staff was able to move quickly to protect the site.

Sean-Paul Carroll, a threat researcher at PandaLabs, the malware detection division of Panda Security, confirmed that the SarahPAC website was down for about six minutes.

- JP