WikiLeaks backlash: The first global cyber war has begun

[Jeffersons Ghost]

WikiLeaks backlash: The first global cyber war has begun, claim hackers

He is one of the newest recruits to Operation Payback. In a London bedroom, the 24-year-old computer hacker is preparing his weaponry for this week's battles in an evolving cyberwar. He is a self-styled defender of free speech, his weapon a laptop and his enemy the US corporations responsible for attacking the website WikiLeaks.

He had seen the flyers that began springing up on the web in mid-September. In chatrooms, on discussion boards and inboxes from Manchester to New York to Sydney the grinning face of a Guy Fawkes mask had appeared with a call to arms. Across the world a battalion of hackers was being summoned.

"Greetings, fellow anons," it said beneath the headline Operation Payback. Alongside were a series of software programs dubbed "our weapons of choice" and a stark message: people needed to show their "hatred"...

Before WikiLeaks, Operation Payback's initial target was America's recording industry, chosen for its prosecutions of music file downloaders. From those humble origins, Payback's anti-censorship, anti-copyright, freedom of speech manifesto would go viral, last week pitting an amorphous army of online hackers against the US government and some of the biggest corporations in the world.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/11/wikileaks-backlash-cyber-war

[Baclava]

1. WikiLeaks = SkyNet?

We know how that one turned out.

Bury guns now, that is my advice.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

5. Are you talking about "Sky Net in the movie?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_%28Terminator%29

[qb]

6. Skynet = unregulated corporations

There is no humanity there. There is no morality there. They do whatever is necessary to maximize profits.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. And this has the taste of guerrilla war

better described in some old fiction. The cyberpunk genre was strangely prescient.

[Edweird]

3. My favorite quote from Fight Club:

"We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not... fuck with us."

[Forkboy]

4. Please return your seat backs to their full upright and locked positions.