Teacher:In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Teacher: Now, understand the problem? Solve this instance: The website and personal credit card information of former Gov. Sarah Palin were cyber-attacked today by Wikileaks supporters, the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate tells ABC News in an email. 
  
 Hackers in London that the Palin team believe to be affiliated with “Operation Payback” – a group of supporters of Julian Assange and Wikileaks – have tried to shut down SarahPac and have disrupted Sarah and Todd Palin’s personal credit card accounts, SarahPAC aide Rebecca Mansour said. 
  
 “No wonder others are keeping silent about Assange's antics,” Palin emailed ABC News. “This is what happens when you exercise the First Amendment and speak against his sick, un-American espionage efforts.” 
  
 Palin has criticized Wikileaks founder Assange, writing on Facebook that his “past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?...Assange is not a 'journalist' any more than the 'editor' of al-Qaeda's new English-language magazine Inspire is a 'journalist.’ He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands." 
  
 Activist Gregg Housh told the New York Times "that 1,500 people were on online forums and chatrooms including Anonops.net, mounting mass and repeated 'denial of service' attacks on sites that have moved against Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks in recent days." 
  
 A cached page from Anonops.net shows Palin's site as a suggested target. 
  
 A SarahPAC.com technical aide said that the "DOS attackers, a group loosely known as Anon_Ops, used a tool called LOIC (Lower Orbit Ion Cannon) to flood sarahpac.com. The attackers wanted us to know that they were affiliated with wikileaks.org through an obscure message in our server log file.“ 
  
 The tech emailed this screenshot to show what he's talking about. 
  
 Mansour said that an employee called Todd Palin this afternoon and told him that his and his wife's account had been compromised and that a company in London was involved. 
  
 It wasn't clear whether the attack to the Palins' credit card account today was related to the attack on her website. 
  
 Anon_Ops describes itself as an "anonymous, decentralized movement which fights against censorship and copywrong." It has enlisted volunteers "create counter-propaganda, organizing attacks (DDoS) on various targets related to censorship (time, date and target will be published by that time)." For that reason, it is difficult to ascertain the exact motivation of any attacker. 
  
 Added Mansour, “the governor voiced her opinion knowing full well that she was speaking out against a shady disreputable organization with no regard for laws or human life. This is how they operate. The world should not be intimidated by them.” 
  
 Mansour added that Wikileaks supporters claim to be “in favor of free speech yet they attack Sarah Palin for exercising her free speech.” She said SarahPAC.com was not harmed because Palin’s staff was able to move quickly to protect the site. 
  
 -Jake Tapper 
  
 *This post has been updated with new information and for clarity. ||||| Hackers rushed to the defense of WikiLeaks on Wednesday, launching attacks on MasterCard, Visa, Swedish prosecutors, a Swiss bank and others who have acted against the site and its jailed founder Julian Assange. 
  
 FILE - In this Aug. 20, 2009 file photo, Libyan Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who was found guilty of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, gestures on his arrival at an airport in Tripoli, Libya. Diplomatic cables revealed... (Associated Press) 
  
 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, back to camera, is driven into Westminster Magistrates Court in London Tuesday Dec. 7, 2010 after being arrested on a European Arrest Warrant. Assange is appearing... (Associated Press) 
  
 Members of the media gather around a prison van as it leaves the rear entrance of Westminster Magistrates Court in London, Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2010, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was denied bail... (Associated Press) 
  
 Claes Borgstrom, lawyer for the two women who claim to have been sexually assaulted by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Sweden in August, talks to media at his office in Stockholm Wednesday, Dec. 8,... (Associated Press) 
  
 Claes Borgstrom, centre, lawyer for the two women who claim to have been sexually assaulted by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Sweden in August, talks to media at his office in Stockholm Wednesday,... (Associated Press) 
  
 FILE - In this Dec.11, 2009 file photo, a sign for MasterCard credit cards is shown on the entrance to a bank, in New York. Mastercard is having severe technical problem Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2010, possibly... (Associated Press) 
  
 This screen shot shows the home page of Mastercard.com. Mastercard is having severe technical problems Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2010, possibly a target by supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. (AP... (Associated Press) 
  
 Internet "hacktivists" operating under the label "Operation Payback" claimed responsibility in a Twitter message for causing severe technological problems at the website for MasterCard, which pulled the plug on its relationship with WikiLeaks a day ago. 
  
 MasterCard acknowledged "a service disruption" involving its Secure Code system for verifying online payments, but spokesman James Issokson said consumers could still use their credit cards for secure transactions. Later Wednesday, Visa's website was inaccessible. 
  
 The online attacks are part of a wave of support for WikiLeaks that is sweeping the Internet. Twitter was choked with messages of solidarity for the group, while the site's Facebook page hit 1 million fans. 
  
 Late Wednesday, Operation Payback itself appeared to run into problems, as many of its sites went down. It was unclear who was behind the counterattack. 
  
 MasterCard is the latest in a string of U.S.-based Internet companies _ including Visa, Amazon.com, PayPal Inc. and EveryDNS _ to cut ties to WikiLeaks in recent days amid intense U.S. government pressure. PayPal was not having problems Wednesday but the company said it faced "a dedicated denial-of-service attack" on Monday. 
  
 WikiLeaks' extensive releases of secret U.S. diplomatic cables have embarrassed U.S. allies, angered rivals, and reopened old wounds across the world. U.S. officials in Washington say other countries have curtailed their dealings with the U.S. government because of WikiLeaks' actions. 
  
 PayPal Vice President Osama Bedier said the company froze WikiLeaks' account after seeing a letter from the U.S. State Department to WikiLeaks saying that the group's activities "were deemed illegal in the United States." 
  
 Offline, WikiLeaks was under pressure on many fronts. Assange is in a British prison fighting extradition to Sweden over a sex crimes case. Recent moves by Swiss Postfinance, MasterCard, PayPal and others that cut the flow of donations to the group have impaired its ability to raise money. 
  
 Neither WikiLeaks nor Assange has been charged with any offense in the U.S., but the U.S. government is investigating whether Assange can be prosecuted for espionage or other offenses. Assange has not been charged with any offenses in Sweden either, but authorities there want to question him about the allegations of sex crimes. 
  
 Undeterred, WikiLeaks released more confidential U.S. cables Wednesday. The latest batch showed the British government feared a furious Libyan reaction if the convicted Lockerbie bomber wasn't set free and expressed relief when they learned he would be released in 2009 on compassionate grounds. 
  
 Another U.S. memo described German leader Angela Merkel as the "Teflon" chancellor, but she brushed it off as mere chatter at a party. American officials were also shown to be lobbying the Russian government to amend a financial bill they felt would disadvantage U.S. companies Visa and MasterCard. 
  
 The most surprising cable of the day came from a U.S. diplomat in Saudi Arabia after a night on the town. 
  
 "The underground nightlife of Jiddah's elite youth is thriving and throbbing," the memo said. "The full range of worldly temptations and vices are available _ alcohol, drugs, sex _ but all behind closed doors." 
  
 The pro-WikiLeaks vengeance campaign on Wednesday appeared to be taking the form of denial-of-service attacks in which computers are harnessed _ sometimes surreptitiously _ to jam target sites with mountains of requests for data, knocking them out of commission. 
  
 Per Hellqvist, a security specialist with the firm Symantec, said a network of web activists called Anonymous _ to which Operation Payback is affiliated _ appeared to be behind many of the attacks. The group, which has previously focused on the Church of Scientology and the music industry, is knocking offline websites seen as hostile to WikiLeaks. 
  
 "While we don't have much of an affiliation with WikiLeaks, we fight for the same reasons," the group said in a statement. "We want transparency and we counter censorship ... we intend to utilize our resources to raise awareness, attack those against and support those who are helping lead our world to freedom and democracy." 
  
 The website for Swedish lawyer Claes Borgstrom, who represents the two women at the center of Assange's sex crimes case, was unreachable Wednesday. 
  
 The Swiss postal system's financial arm, Postfinance, which shut down Assange's bank account on Monday, was also having trouble. Spokesman Alex Josty said the website buckled under a barrage of traffic Tuesday. 
  
 "Yesterday it was very, very difficult, then things improved overnight," he told the AP. "But it's still not entirely back to normal." 
  
 Ironically, the microblogging site Twitter _ home of much WikiLeaks support _ could become the next target. Operation Payback posted a statement claiming "Twitter you're next for censoring Wikileaks discussion." 
  
 Some WikiLeaks supporters accuse Twitter of preventing the term "WikiLeaks" from appearing as one of its popular "trending topics." Twitter denies censorship, saying the topics are determined by an algorithm. 
  
 Twitter's top trending topics are not the ones people are discussing the most overall, but those they are talking about more right now than they did previously, Twitter explained in an e-mail Wednesday. If tweets were ranked by volume alone, the weather or other mundane topics would dominate the trends. 
  
 WikiLeaks angered the U.S. government earlier this year when it posted a video showing U.S. troops on a helicopter gunning down two Reuters journalists in Iraq. Since then, the organization has leaked some 400,000 classified U.S. war files from Iraq and 76,000 from Afghanistan, which U.S. military officials say could put people's lives at risk. In the last few weeks, the group has begun leaking a massive trove of secret U.S. diplomatic cables. 
  
 U.S. officials have directed their anger at Assange, but others have begun to ask whether Washington shares the blame for the diplomatic uproar. 
  
 "The core of all this lies with the failure of the government of the United States to properly protect its own diplomatic communications," Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said Wednesday, criticizing the fact that tens of thousands of U.S. government employees had access to the cables. 
  
 Assange, meanwhile, faces a new extradition hearing in London next week where his lawyers plan to reapply for bail. The 39-year-old Australian denies two women's allegations in Sweden of rape, molestation and unlawful coercion, and is fighting his extradition to Sweden. 
  
 In a Twitter message Wednesday, WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson shrugged off the challenges. 
  
 "We will not be gagged, either by judicial action or corporate censorship ... WikiLeaks is still online," Hrafnsson said. 
  
 ___ 
  
 Malin Rising in Stockholm, Frank Jordans in Geneva, Jamey Keaten in Paris, Cassandra Vinograd in London, Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Brian Murphy in Dubai, Tia Goldenberg in Jerusalem, Michelle Chapman, Peter Svensson and Barbara Ortutay in New York and Anne Flaherty in Washington contributed to this report. |||||
Student:
The WikiLeaks' revenge brigade has gone after Sarah Palin. The hackers, part of the so-called Operation Payback, tried to shut down her SarahPac website and "disrupted" the credit card accounts of her and husband Todd, reports ABC. Similar cyber-attacks were wreaking havoc on the websites of MasterCard and Visa today, and PayPal fended off one earlier in the week. (See AP for the latest on those attacks.) “No wonder others are keeping silent about Assange's antics,” Palin emailed ABC's Jake Tapper. "This is what happens when you exercise the First Amendment and speak against his sick, un-American espionage efforts.” (Palin had previously said the US should hunt Julian Assange on par with Osama bin Laden.) It's not clear what, if any, damage the hackers did to the Palins' credit card accounts, but SarahPac weathered the morning attack and didn't go down.