Cyber attacks by supporters of Julian Assange and Wikileaks have been attacking companies like Visa (NYSE:V), PayPal (Nasdaq:EBAY) Amazon (Nasdaq:AMZN) and Mastercard (NYSE:MA) who distanced themselves from Wikileaks in various ways.
Some of the louder voices have called for a boycott of Amazon.com in response to them removing Wikileaks from their servers.
Commenting on the effect on Mastercard, Canaccord said this, 'The world’s second-biggest payments network came under fire yesterday: according to various media reports, MasterCard’s online service was briefly interrupted in a denial-of-service (DOS) attack orchestrated by the hacking group as 'Anonymous,' as well as users of 4Chan, a network of uncensored message boards. “The issue appears to be the result of a concentrated effort to flood our corporate Website with traffic and slow access,” said James Issokson, a spokesman for MasterCard. He emphasized the company’s systems hadn’t been compromised and that “there is no impact on our cardholders’ ability to use their cards for secure transactions globally”. The attack, dubbed 'Operation Payback,' comes a day after Mastercard – apparently acting under intense pressure from Washington – announced it was suspending all payments to WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing website that has been in the limelight. Mastercard was following Visa, PayPal and Amazon, all of which have severed ties with the site and its founder Julian Assange in the last few days. The companies have justified their decision to stop donations on the grounds that WikiLeaks is acting 'illegally.'”
Being the busiest season for all the parties involved, other than Amazon, the rest closed Thursday's trading session up.
Mastercard ended the day at $251.22, up $0.58, or 0.23 percent. Amazon.com closed at $174.85, down $1.44, or 0.82 percent. eBay ended at $30.35, up $0.20, or 0.66 percent. Visa closed at $79.12, up $1.18, or 1.51 percent.
Showing posts with label Julian Assange. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Julian Assange. Show all posts
Friday, December 10, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) Shouldn't Suffer from Wikileaks Data Says Bove
Commenting on any potential fallout from data released by Wikileaks, Rochdale Securities' Dick Bove said there shouldn't be anything released that hasn't already been heard, and it shouldn't have much impact, if any, on Bank of America (NYSE:BAC).
Julian Assange has even said in general that he has so much data it's hard to release it in a meaningful manner in a way it could be quickly accessed.
That probably affirms Bove's assertion there won't be anything new in the data, although it's sure to stir up a lot of memories, if that's of any consequence.
Bove speculated saying, "It may be that the executive indicated that Bank of America was fully aware of all the write-offs and bonuses at Merrill...," Bove said. "Or, the data may deal with Countrywide's underwriting policies and some type of collusion between the bank and Countrywide related to the issuance of securities. Possibly the "friends of Angelo" may be revealed including Senator Dodd's relationship with the company."
Bank of America closed Tuesday at $10.95, dropping $0.36, or 3.18 percent. Bove maintains a "Buy" rating on the financial giant, and a price target of $19.25.
Julian Assange has even said in general that he has so much data it's hard to release it in a meaningful manner in a way it could be quickly accessed.
That probably affirms Bove's assertion there won't be anything new in the data, although it's sure to stir up a lot of memories, if that's of any consequence.
Bove speculated saying, "It may be that the executive indicated that Bank of America was fully aware of all the write-offs and bonuses at Merrill...," Bove said. "Or, the data may deal with Countrywide's underwriting policies and some type of collusion between the bank and Countrywide related to the issuance of securities. Possibly the "friends of Angelo" may be revealed including Senator Dodd's relationship with the company."
Bank of America closed Tuesday at $10.95, dropping $0.36, or 3.18 percent. Bove maintains a "Buy" rating on the financial giant, and a price target of $19.25.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Bank Of America (NYSE:BAC) to be Exposed by WikiLeaks?
It's hard to tell at this time whether or not the assertion by Julian Assange that he has information which could "take down" a major bank (now assumed to be Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) is true or not, but it definitely has garnered interest and generated some hand-wringing at the same time.
The reason Bank of America is thought to be the target of information being released is from an interview in 2009 by Computer World with Assange, where he said this:
"At the moment, for example, we are sitting on 5GB from Bank of America, one of the executive's hard drives. Now how do we present that? It's a difficult problem. We could just dump it all into one giant Zip file, but we know for a fact that has limited impact. To have impact, it needs to be easy for people to dive in and search it and get something out of it."
The question after sitting on the information so long is whether or not anything new and startling will be revealed, and if in fact Assange has even come close to going through most of it, as it's a huge amount of data to sift through, and would take a team of people to do it.
Even though Bank of America was cited by Assange, it hasn't been confirmed yet whether or not they're actually the bank or banks he had in mind when talking about one or two of them being taken down.
He did say in the interview that it won't have a significant impact on the overall banking industry, but will definitely have an impact on a small number of them, as mentioned above.
The reason Bank of America is thought to be the target of information being released is from an interview in 2009 by Computer World with Assange, where he said this:
"At the moment, for example, we are sitting on 5GB from Bank of America, one of the executive's hard drives. Now how do we present that? It's a difficult problem. We could just dump it all into one giant Zip file, but we know for a fact that has limited impact. To have impact, it needs to be easy for people to dive in and search it and get something out of it."
The question after sitting on the information so long is whether or not anything new and startling will be revealed, and if in fact Assange has even come close to going through most of it, as it's a huge amount of data to sift through, and would take a team of people to do it.
Even though Bank of America was cited by Assange, it hasn't been confirmed yet whether or not they're actually the bank or banks he had in mind when talking about one or two of them being taken down.
He did say in the interview that it won't have a significant impact on the overall banking industry, but will definitely have an impact on a small number of them, as mentioned above.
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