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4chan hit by DDoS assault

If a shock site got defaced would anyone notice?

Controversial image board 4chan came under a denial of service attack on Tuesday.

A status message on 4chan's status boards (below) reported that the birthplace of anonymous and home of midget porn had joined the "ranks of MasterCard, Visa, PayPal" as victims of a denial of service attack.

Site is down due to DDoS. We now join the ranks of MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, et al.—an exclusive club!

The Anonymous contingent of 4chan was behind the attacks on Mastercard et al over the refusal of many elements of the banking industry to do business with Wikileaks. In response, patriot hacktivists have launched denial of service attacks on 4chan IRC channels.

Whether the latest "attack" is a continuation of that dispute isn't entirely clear. 4chan's boards were reachable on Wednesday but full of "link spam" to porn sites. We'd hesitate to describe this as evidence of some sort of security attack/lapse on such a free-wheeling anything goes forum as 4chan.

Organisations such as Panda Security and Arbor Networks, both of which have done a good job tracking the Operation Avenge Assange attacks, couldn't be reached for immediate comment on the latest assaults. ®

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