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Paypal.com appears to be unavailable
- scottkrager 16y agoYep, just tried to pay a contractor....no dice.
- InclinedPlane 16y agoThe https site seems to be up, if your problem was just getting to the homepage.
- martin_k 16y agowww.paypal.com works for most people.
- aditya 16y agoYup, works here too!
- ThePinion 16y agoShutting down the Visa and Mastercard probably didn't change too much, but this for sure will. Think of how much eBay is dependent on PayPal for purchases. This should be an interesting outcome! Even if people don't feel it's morally right, I'm still very impressed by the current "cyber wars" going on. Either way, I don't lose anything. I guess I'm just one of those people that likes to watch the world burn...
- CamperBob 16y agoThere isn't going to be any burning. What's going to happen is that banks and CC companies will proactively scrub their client lists for anything that looks even vaguely controversial, and hose it before it blows up in their faces. After this, the banks will be afraid of Anonymous, and they will do whatever it takes to stay off their radar... including turning down a lot of legitimate business. "Politically unconventional" organizations around the world are about to get the same arms-length treatment that adult sites have always gotten.
- antirez 16y ago> What's going to happen is that banks and CC companies will proactively scrub their client lists for anything that looks even vaguely controversial That's impossible as it is: too much work, AND, too much lose of income.
- wladimir 16y agoWhich means that alternative payment systems will rise to fill in the void. And nothing of value was lost...
- petercooper 16y agoThat's happened with mortgages after the clamping down on banks in the UK. The bailed out banks can't charge interest rates as high as they'd like, so they turn down a lot of less than perfect business. End result is it's harder than ever for normal folk and less reputable banks with far higher charges have stepped in to plug the gap. Idealistic humans never learn anything about economics over time..
- aerique 16y agoOr they could just have not closed down Wikileaks' accounts in an attempt to brown-nose the US government. If they had resisted and only closed down the accounts after court orders the reaction would have been quite different. I'm frankly appalled at how many people here are actually defending MasterCard, Visa and PayPal. As if money and shareholder interests are all that matters. There are also examples of companies that don't hand over their clients' information without court orders or give in to political pressure (for example XS4ALL here in the Netherlands) and you know: they are actually appreciated for it and very successful!
- martinkallstrom 16y ago"It's not just you! http://paypal.com http://paypal.com looks down from here." http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/paypal.com http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/paypal.com
- il 16y agohttps://www.paypal.com/ https://www.paypal.com/ still works, all they're doing is hammering the front page, any transactions over SSL should still work fine.
- paraschopra 16y agoI briefly logged onto their IRC channel. It is a total chaos but still they all agree to one target. They have also been hammering www.paypal.com port 443 so I expect this to do down soon too.
- mapleoin 16y agoWhat IRC channel are you talking about?
- paraschopra 16y agoSh.. you didn't get this from me: irc.anonops.net
- cosmicray 16y agoWhatever they're doing, its not having much effect. I used PP last night, and again this morning. What I saw felt normal. Last night there was briefly some slowdown, but nothing of that this morning. Hammering a lesser web site could bring it down, but PP has been in the net facing business for enough years they know better.
- CWuestefeld 16y agoWhat in the world does the SSL connection have to do with anything? Surely it's the same web servers that are getting swamped, regardless of whether the incoming traffic is clear or SSL.
- il 16y agoThe secure/payments stuff probably happens on totally different servers.
- FirstHopSystems 16y agoDNS issues?. No 301 Redirect from the server. Just type https://www.paypal.com https://www.paypal.com to go straight to the web page.
- koevet 16y agohttp://www.paypal.com http://www.paypal.com is down from here (Denmark). Https is responding though. Quite impressive.
- geedee77 16y agoTo be perfectly honest, the actions of the 'anonymous' are pretty disgusting and it's bullying. A company provides a useful service to the majority of the on-line world and, just because they do something to protect themselves and their identity (there's a lot of people who dislike wikileaks) then this 'collective' decide to disrupt the whole company. Bullying was pathetic in high school and is so much worse in the 'grown-up' world, especially when it affects so many normal people.
- fookyong 16y agoit's self-perpetuating in the same way as school bullying, too. anyone with authority who rallies against the Anon community would likely make themselves a target also.
- muppetman 16y agoYou don't think that Paypal is also a bully as well? Closing people's accounts (not just Wikileaks) when they see fit, having no real recourse to try and get your money once that's happened etc. Paypal have a reputation for being a bunch of thieves. I can't say I feel bad for them. I've never been burned by them, I'm just going from the amount of people here that post a regular "Paypal froze my account" story.
- geedee77 16y agoI'm not saying they aren't but when has the tactic against a bully being to bully them? Regardless of what you think about Paypal themselves, there are an awful lot of people that rely on the service they provide that can now no longer use that service due to the tactics of Anonymous.
- xd 16y agoMaybe this raises a serious question. Why are so many people (including myself) reliant on one company for handling their payments? Maybe traders should start adding alternative forms of payment to their excepted payments. I know I will.
- herrherr 16y agoWhat I like most, is that all people click on the link although it says "It's unavailable". Wondering if this has an additional effect on the availability.
- dan00 16y agoPerhaps that's the reason why it's unavailable. ;)
- xd 16y agoMaybe that's the DDOS in action .. post news to as many high traffic news sites as possible (/., reddit, hn, etc) that paypal is down with a direct link to paypal in the title and bingo.
- nikster 16y agoNah, no way. PayPal wouldn't go down from a few 10k additional hits. PayPal is huge, and needs 100% uptime, and in addition to that has undoubtedly prepared for a major DDOS attack. They have unlimited resources, they have expertise, and they've seen it coming. If Anonymous can take PayPal down, then they can take anyone down.
- jacquesm 16y ago> They have unlimited resources They don't, if they did you would not be reading this post.
- Silhouette 16y agoI suspect we are going to see two major changes over the next few weeks as a direct result of the "cyber-attacks" going on recently. 1. Financial services will re-evaluate the risks of this kind of attack vs. the cost of assigning more resources to guard against it. 2. Governments will finally start taking IT security seriously. The latter is the more interesting, because while banks are generally reasonably clued up about balancing risks and will simply adjust their current practices, elected representatives who aren't technically inclined will probably be discolouring their underwear over the fall-out if the bad guys really tried to do some damage, given that it is this easy for a few upset people to cripple the world's payment systems. I suspect that as a reuslt, we can look forward to increasingly draconian penalties being introduced for this sort of action in most jurisdictions, the end of on-line anonymity as it has been known, and ruthless throttling/disconnection of entire ISPs/countries that don't play ball with either of the above. If you thought government reactions to copyright infringement were heavy-handed, I imagine they will look like a nun comforting a child compared to what is coming next. The sad thing is that better security, robustness, user authentication, etc. should have been built into the Internet by default for years, but the same "Wild West" evolution that was so successful in the early days has also been a poor driver of consolidation now that the Internet isn't just a toy for the military types and the universities any more. Maybe the Powers That Be will finally start taking serious advice about IT from people who know what they're talking about and collectively give the issues the attention they deserve. (I won't hold my breath, though; this could all end in tears, with a mess of ill-informed and poorly-implemented measures that cause all kinds of additional dangers to innocent people without actually fixing the real problem.)
- shin_lao 16y agoGovernments take IT security very seriously, I don't see where you've seen they don't. The problem is that you just can't secure a whole infrastructure overnight and that security is very hard.
- borism 16y agoHe doesn't mean governments' IT security (which is so-so overall), but the Internet as a whole. And he's right the stuff that will come out of it probably will not be very encouraging.
- freechoice1 16y agoPaypal is notorious to freeze accounts as they like, and bully people around. They can do this because they know they are big. Now they are starting to force their own political agendas on the world population as well. I've quit my account with them because I want this world to be a better place to live in, than being controlled by a bully who harass people.
- rimantas 16y agoGreat. How do I close account with Anon, because I don't want them to infringe on my ability to make payments?
- GHFigs 16y agoAll you have to do is combine your request with an image of a headless suit or Guy Fawkes mask and upload it to /b/ every hour or so. Anonymous will get right on it.
- CWuestefeld 16y agoYou've made me realize what I think is a startling bit of irony. Many people -- WikiLeaks, in fact -- are protesting US action in Iraq. They are particularly upset about the "collateral damage" of civilians being caught up in the violence. Yet here, those cheering for the DDoS attacks in support of WikiLeaks are just shrugging off the collateral damage that this attack is causing. Addendum: the quick, reflex downvotes are really annoying. If you think I'm not contributing to the discussion, please at least take the time to explain why. It seems to me that there's a patter for these. I lose a few points immediately, but then as more thoughtful people actually take the time to think about it, the score climbs back up into positive territory. That suggests to me that the down-votes are just readers being petulant because I disagree with them.
- ssmoot 16y agoNobody's dying here. There's a crazy amount of talk here about WL trying to bring down government or the collateral damage to business and equating that to civilian deaths. I don't know if Assange goes around saying "anarchy for everyone!" and I don't care. I don't like the idea of vast swaths of government operating in secret. From the CIA, to the closed door congressional meetings. Second, it's only money. In the scheme of things it's probably a net positive for the economy as alternatives are explored, supporting perhaps financial startups, security firms are employed, etc. You (and lot's of others) are comparing that to leaks detailing loss of life. I don't get it. The moral compass on HN is weird.
- ericz 16y agoDoes anyone else keep coming back here because every link on the homepage is light grey because they are visited, but since the site is down it does not show this link as visited. Hehe
- bayes 16y agoI fear some naive young US-based Anonymous participants may soon be getting a very rude awakening (if the FBI and Secret Service respond to this by making an example of them). Edit: downvote me all you like, but you should read the post about what happens when you're busted by the feds (from the hacker crackdown): http://web.textfiles.com/hacking/agentsteal.txt http://web.textfiles.com/hacking/agentsteal.txt
- daliusd 16y agoLike HN readers who are linked to paypal :)
- zefhous 16y agoAnd now thanks to this story Hacker News is participating in the DDOS because we all want to see for ourselves if PayPal is responsive...
- nikster 16y agoA few thousand hits doesn't make any difference. It takes millions and billions to rattle PayPal.
- zefhous 16y agoYeah, I'm not too serious about HN being involved. I just always think it's funny when there's a story on a popular website about some website being over capacity because everyone starts visiting and checking if it's up yet.
- desenu 16y agoseems like a correct assessment. SSL still works tho.
- pigbucket 16y agoIf you dominate a market, a serious ethical duty devolves upon you to do right by your customers, but Paypal, Visa, and MC, on which donation-supported non-profit orgs like Wikileaks almost entirely depend, have utterly failed to fulfill that duty; in fact they didn't even try. Their actions, arbitrary or spineless, have almost completely choked off funding for Wikileaks. I never imagined ending up saying this, but I'm impressed and grateful that there exists an international, anonymous horde able to begin the process of making companies like this at least minimally answerable for their actions, which no one else seems capable or desirous of doing.
- citricsquid 16y agoYou're ignoring the thousands (hundreds of thousands, millions?) of "innocent" businesses that are having problems because of this. Sure try and hurt Visa, Mastercard and Paypal, but hurting innocent people? Isn't that exactly what the US government have done? "It's for the greater good". The people involved in these attacks are just as bad.
- alnayyir 16y agoI'm going to preface this by saying that I'm not actually a huge fan of WikiLeaks or of Anon, but... Try to keep things in perspective. We're facing a substantial progression towards a hybridization of the scenarios outlined in 1984 and Brave New World, and you're worried about the disruption of commerce? Are your priorities really that warped? There's always collateral damage, whether it's merchants or your civil rights. I should've guessed that there would be hand-wringing about commerce on here, but I never knew it would be so ridiculous considering what's being hashed out here.
- citricsquid 16y agoI'm sorry, but do you honestly think this is anymore than a bunch of angry teenagers who will be bored in a week? Look back on every other instance of "Anon" "protesting" and work out what has changed. Please do show what they've actually done beyond cause minor temporary disruption, it just so happens that this time the minor disruption has real world repercussions and is hurting businesses. The people who are responsible for this are those in US government, I think it's pathetic companies like Visa, Paypal and Mastercard are being attacked when they've done nothing wrong, it's the US government at fault but they're "untouchable" to these angsty teenagers so they do the thing they always do and attack the weakest targets. Give it a week and nobody will remember any of this, besides the businesses that lost money.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- thehodge 16y agoI wonder if Amazon is next?
- Garbage 16y agoAmazon is too big to be taken down. It will require much more infrastructure than paypal.com
- alkavan 16y agoWikiLeaks documents expose US foreign policy conspiracies. All cables with tags from 1- 5000 [Kindle Edition] http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004EEOLIU?ie=UTF8&force-full-site=1 http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004EEOLIU?ie=UTF8&am...
- rms 16y agoPayments API is still working.
- vegasbrianc 16y agoThis should help the IT Security industry get a boost and hopefully create more jobs.
- alkavan 16y agoreminds me the year 2000, yahoo.com and Mafiaboy. 10 years passed since, i see nothing has been changed, and this time i guess it's not ./smurf, better, it's the LOIC! so even people who don't know what a packet is can use it to harm corp. this application also looks more like a game, a one that will cost lots of money. totally agree someone should take IT security more seriously.
- nikster 16y agoIt's back up. But that sure was impressive. Anyone have a link to uptime statistics?
- kathyannov 16y agoIs this because they blocked the funds of Julian Assange? Probably a hacker group teaching a lesson or two here
- singular 16y agoI really don't think this kind of behaviour helps anything. Though we may disagree with the actions of these corporations, using thousands of ordinary people's computers to flood sites many people use for things that have nothing to do with Julian Assange, Wikileaks or anything whatsoever linked to the cable leaks is simply wrong. Being immoral in order to expose the immorality of others does nothing but muddy the waters. There are better ways of challenging these things while retaining your decency.
- euccastro 16y agoFor example?
- singular 16y agorunning a mirror of wikileaks :)
- indrax 16y agoIf they had nothing to do with it, they would not have been pressured by the government. They picked a side. DDoSing them is not immoral. (though if it's a zombie net, that is immoral.)
- singular 16y agoActually, I heard the bot computers were provided by volunteers. Regardless, the fact that the attacks affect those who have taken neither side, i.e. customers of the sites being targeting, I still feel the behaviour is immoral, not to mention the fact it makes it easy for the anti-wikileaks guys to denounce the argument for wikileaks as that of 'computer criminals', etc.
- aj700 16y agoI'm morally indifferent, even in favour of the principle of wikileaks. I'm not in favour of a leaker of US information motivated only by wanting reforms that are pipe dreams. Freedom of speech can never extend to state secrets. In Europe, we'd never be so attached to the idea that we'd take it that far. I think we may have sacrificed a lot - eg. the ability of the net to process pre-Christmas payments, for the "gain" of providing the ability of some dick at DoD to tell us what Hillary's people think of various national dictators, or that Iraq was not 100% superbly executed. Yeah, big deal. I don't believe Assange's arrest is a conspiracy. 4chan launching all this shit may just force the net to change in some very bad ways.
- naz 16y agoIt doesn't sound like you are in favour of the principle of WikiLeaks.
- aj700 16y agoIt should continue to exist, in case someone does have something worthwhile to release. But in this case it was hardly worth it. Except for the secret sites, that WAS irresponsible. The acceptable principle of the site does not exempt its operators from the law of developed countries, and will obviously subject them to the lawlessness of undeveloped ones. Now they're threatening to take down twitter (who don't need any help in doing that!) because they are percieved to be preventing 'wikileaks' from trending. Looks increasingly like a load of kids with a ddos hammer seeing enticing nails everywhere.
- naz 16y agoWhat law has WikiLeaks broken?
- aj700 16y agoAs an organisation, afaik, none. But the individuals involved could have: To issue a warrant, they must have grounds to do so - as I said, I very much doubt that the charges against Assange are simply "made up". If they are, he'll be found innocent. The reason most people don't put a principle above the idea that it is foolish to piss off The White House is because they don't have the balls to take the consequences. He seems quite happy to. Good for him. Rather him than me.
- aj700 16y agohttp://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/performance/wikileaks http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/performance/wikileak... sites will be up AND down simultaneously for different people. That's what happens when they're overloaded.
- wildmXranat 16y agoAs I'm sitting on the sidelines of it all, I wonder how a bunch of LOLcat loving, technically savvy people can bring down billion dollar multinational's, points of technical exposure. What amount, if any, preparation can guard against a cyber mob-rule attack? It seems that unless a machine is unplugged from the network, you're up shit creek without a paddle.
- klbarry 16y agoYep, it's working now for me.