UPDATE: An Internet Service Provider outage, not hackers, was to blame for the unavailability of MasterCard’s website early Tuesday morning according to a statement from a company spokesman.
“We can confirm that MasterCard’s corporate, public-facing website experienced intermittent service disruption, due to a telecommunications/Internet Service Provider outage that impacted multiple users,” MasterCard’s Jennifer Stalzer said via e-mail.
It was previously thought the site had been knocked offline after being hit by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack six months after the company’s refusal to handle donations to controversial whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks.
In a Twitter post this morning, Wikileaks claimed hacktivists took down the site in protest “over the continuing illegal WikiLeaks fiscal embargo” and confirmed that VISA, PayPal, Bank of America and Western Union continue to remain in their crosshairs.
MasterCard’s’ contentious relationship with WikiLeaks began in December, 2010, when they, along with PayPal and Visa, agreed to stop processing donations to the group following their leak of more than 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables.
WikiLeaks’ unofficial allies Anonymous last targeted MasterCard’s site on December 8, making the site unavailable for several hours as part of a campaign they called Operation Payback.
