The Swiss bank which froze the accounts of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is under electronic attack by WikiLeaks supporters. The PostFinance.ch website is being subjected to a distributed denial of service attack, rendering the site unusable by its customers and other visitors.
PostFinance yesterday announced that it had ended its business relationship with Julian Assange, claiming that he had falsely entered Geneva as his domicile. “Assange cannot provide proof of residence in Switzerland and thus does not meet the criteria for a customer relationship with PostFinance. For this reason, PostFinance is entitled to close his account.”
PostFinance appears to have made the decision independently, pointing out that it has the option of “terminating business relationships which run contrary to public and moral opinion.”
PayPal’s official blog was also attacked after its decision to restrict the PayPal account used for collecting WikiLeaks donations. Twitter user AnonyWatcher posted a TANGO DOWN message announcing a DDoS attack against the blog. On Friday, PayPal’s blog posted the following statement: “PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity.”
In another financial setback, MasterCard has also said that it will be taking action to ensure that WikiLeaks can no longer accept MasterCard-branded products.
Real-time performance graphs for www.postfinance.ch can be viewed here.