Quote Originally Posted by Mid
A 16-year-old boy has been arrested in the Netherlands in connection with cyber attacks on MasterCard and PayPal by Wikileaks sympathisers.

According to the Public Prosecution Office, the boy was arrested in The Hague.
Dutch teen arrested for pro-Wikileak cyber attacks | Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Police arrest second WikiLeaks 'hacktivist'

Dutch police arrested a 19-year-old on suspicion of a cyber attack on a government website, marking the second teenage arrest for such offences linked to the WikiLeaks fallout.

Police arrested the man yesterday afternoon in the municipality of Hoogezand-Sappemeer, suspecting him of being one of the people responsible for an attack on the website of the national prosecutor.

An anonymous group claimed responsibility for the attack on microblogging platform Twitter, saying it was to avenge the arrest of a 16-year-old who had attacked opponents of whistleblower website WikiLeaks, the prosecutor said in a statement.

The 19-year-old is alleged to have incited others to take part in Friday's attack.

Under Dutch law the maximum penalty for a denial of service attack - in which a target computer or website is rendered unusable - is six years in prison.

Cyber attackers, or "hacktivists", have been targeting those they perceive as opponents of WikiLeaks, including companies who in recent days have deprived the organisation of their services.

However, the internet activist group Anonymous, which brought down the websites of credit card giants MasterCard and Visa this week, says it has abandoned its strategy of online attacks.

In an overnight blog post, Anonymous announced a change of strategy, saying it now aims to publish the US diplomatic cables as widely as possible and in ways that makes them as hard as possible to trace.

"We have, at best, given them a black eye. The game has changed. When the game changes, so too must our strategies," said the blog post as it announces "Operation: Leakspin".

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