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Wikileaks hactivists group Anonymous are urging followers into the streets prompting those on their side to show their support with pro-Wikileaks propaganda in an extravagant display of devotion, which could no doubt lead to a series of demonstrations and protests.

The group responsible for the take down of sites such as MasterCard and supposedly Amazon have decided on this new approach, shunning their previous ‘achievements’ in favour of analogue tactics.

Called Operation Paperstporm, the movement aims to gain a show of volunteers to print and display supportive messages in towns and cities, asking those involved to use Saturday as their platform when hundreds will be busy Christmas shopping.

In order to make the support reach all corners of the earth, volunteers have also been asked to translate posters and messages into different languages so the new campaign can be as effective as possible. These ‘low tech’ attacks are another ploy to gain as much publicity as possible at a time when Julian Assange, the creator of Wikileaks, is behind bars.

Phill Midwinter, a member of Anonymous expresses his own views and personal opinion, explaining he no longer wants to harm or disrupt innocent people. He says, “We don’t want to annoy or make life difficult for internet users.” Adding, “They’re examples of how we can use crowd-sourcing to get our message across, without doing anything illegal.”

In response to the plans the police issued this statement “The Metropolitan Police Service is monitoring the situation relating to recent and ongoing denial of service attacks and will investigate where appropriate.”

Watch this space.

Is it just us or is hacking taking over the world? Millions of internet users across the globe are being prompted to change their passwords as rumours spread that certain sites were about to face a major hack attack. Gawker, host to a range of the world’s most popular blogs first blew the lid off the story when they themselves experienced an attack over the past weekend by an organisation called Gnosis.

This has now prompted Yahoo and social media sites Twitter and LinkedIn to ask their users to change passwords as well as the hugely popular World of Warcraft which has over 12 million subscribers.

The hackers apparently targeted Gawker because they believed the site to display ‘arrogance’ and the damage they caused included publishing account details of 1.3 million users, including a large amount of passwords.

So how do we avoid this outburst of hacking? It’s fairly simple really; here are our top 3 tips.

1. Don’t make your password easy to guess, avoid using your name and try not to use a word that can be found in the dictionary.

2. Do include a mixture of letters and numbers and use both upper and lower case.

3. Don’t use the same password across a range of different sites, this makes you more vulnerable.

It’s also important to make sure your host has a firewall installed onto the server and of course, use your common sense!

For the first time ever, tweeting on Twitter was permitted in a UK courtroom, during the court trial of Julian Assange, the founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks whistleblowing internet site.

Normally, absolutely no mobile phones are allowed in a court room, in case of disruption or recording of private and protected information. However, the judge presiding over the Wikileaks head Mr Assange, permitted journalists to use twitter on their mobile phones in the courtroom to keep track of proceedings.

Alexi Mostrous, the Times special correspondent asked the judge if tweeting would be allowed while the appeal was taking place, the judge was recorded saying to her  so long as it is “quiet and doesn’t disturb anything.”

It seems after Wikilekas brought to the attention our global government’s dirty laundry- waving it in the air for everyone to see, so shall the court vice versa. It’s payback time, and the court is allowing journalists to unleash private and personal information about Assange throughout the trial over the internet.

Is it fair? Well according to a senior Australian official once warned Mr Assange that since he played “outside the rules”, he would be dealt with outside the rules – or so he told the New York Times. It brings to one’s mind ‘an-eye-for-an-eye’ proverb.

Mr Assange gave himself up to Metropolitan police earlier this month after an arrest warrant by two women claiming they had been raped by him.

They said they would and they did, or did they? Amazon’s website was temporarily kicked offline on Sunday for about 30 minutes, although claiming it was ‘hardware failure’, it’s a bit of a coincidence if you ask us. After all it was only a couple of days ago that pro-Wikileaks hacktivitsts Anonymous were threatening to launch a cyber-attack on them after the online retailer withdrew services from the whistle-blowing site.

The outage, which couldn’t have come at a worse time what with Christmas right around the corner, affected FIVE of their global domains: Britain .uk, France .fr, Germany .de, Austria .at and Italy .it.

“The brief interruption to our European retail sites last night was due to hardware failure in our European datacentre network and not the result of a [distributed denial of service] attempt,” said a spokesperson for the firm.

Previously in the case of the MasterCard take down we’ve been able to find a response from the group on Twitter however it looks like they’ve suspended the Anonymous account, does this mean their next in the firing line? We wouldn’t be surprised!

First they shutdown MasterCard, and now Visa, PayPal and Amazon one of the largest online retailers are in the firing line.

Who else are we talking about but the self-proclaimed ‘Anonymous’ group of pro-Wikileaks activist who are plotting to launch cyber-attacks on any websites that appears to be bowing to government pressure. Although their first scheduled attempt on Thursday (yesterday) at 1600 GMT failed due to a lack of ‘forces’, they are thought to attack again in the near future.

Explaining their approach of a distributed denial of service attack which disallows multiple users to access the targeted site is ‘Coldblood’, an unidentified hacker from Anonymous. “A good analogy for it is if you all get in a line and walk through a door one by one, then you’re gonna get through, but if thousands of people run at that door at once you’re all gonna get jammed.”

In further support of this movement, a tool allowing others to join in with attacks has been downloaded more than 31,000 times.

We have a feeling this isn’t the last we hear about this.

Google have given fans a preview of their highly anticipated tablet which is thought to give Apple’s iPad a run for their money.

Using their already hugely successful platform Android, the device will be built by Motorola and feature the latest version of the software which was been dubbed ‘Honeycomb.’

Android expert Andy Rubin showcased a prototype tablet to demonstrate its capabilities to a select few at an event in San Francisco this week.

Honeycomb has been specially designed and will be used to work on tablet computers however further details of the gadget are being kept under wraps.

More competitors will join the market in 2011 with launches from the iPad2 and RIM’s Blackberry PlayBook.

MasterCard internet site has been under attack with disrupted payments, according to investigators. The site is not the only one being targeted by an anonymous group of hackers, who have pledged to pursue firms after withdrawing the whistleblowing website Wikileaks.

Customers have not been able to use the service for the past couple of hours and MasterCard has even stopped processing payments. In particular, the online payments for MasterCard, known as SecureCode, have been under hackers attack.

The hackers called Anonymous have links to the notorious board 4chan, and are a loose-knit group of activists.

Other internet sites that stopped sending payments to Wikileaks, such as PayPal have been targeted.

Noa Bar Yosef, a senior analyst at security firm Imperva said the attacks were “very focused”.

“It is recruiting people from within their own network. They are actually asking supporters to download a piece of code, the DDoSing malware, and upon a wake-up call the computer engages in the denial of service,” he said.

Before the sites were attacked, one of the hackers going under the name Coldblood made threats that these events would follow. They aim to give companies a “wake-up” call.

Fugitive, Julian Assange, the founder of whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, gave himself up for arrest this morning after years on the run.

The 39-year-old was taken into custody by the London Metropolitan police and is due to appear at the City of Westminster Magistrates Court later today.

Mr Assange has been accused by the Swedish authorities of sexual molestation and unlawful coercion of two women. However, he strongly denies these allegations, which seem to overlap his recent spread of 250,000 highly secretive official documents on Wikileaks.

Wikileaks is an international non-profit media organisation based on the internet. It publishes unavailable documents from anonymous sources and leaks, arguing that “without transparency, democracy is meaningless.”

However, Mr Assange has warned authorities that ‘in case of his sudden demise, a letter will be opened that will release hundreds and thousands of highly secretive information’.

Furthermore, a senior Australian official once warned Mr Assange that since he played “outside the rules”, he would be dealt with outside the rules – or so he told the New York Times.

Mark Stephens, the lawyer of Mr Assange said: “It’s about time we got to the end of the day and we got some truth, justice and rule of law.

“Julian Assange has been the one in hot pursuit to vindicate himself to clear his good name.”

Broadband will be super-speeding through two thirds of the UK households, by fibre optic internet connection by 2015. Bygone are the days of patiently waiting for internet files to download. We want them, here and now, quick, quick, no messing us about.

Ministers are aiming for the UK to have Europe’s best broadband network. “The reason we want to do this is very simple — it’s about jobs,” says Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

Government will play a key role in setting the ball rolling in the digital race by catalysing investment by the private sector.

“In order to determine what constitutes ‘the best’ network in Europe, we will adopt a scorecard which will focus on four headline indicators: speed, coverage, price and choice,” according to government strategy plans.  The goal is to deliver fibre optic broadband in every community across the UK as soon as possible.

UK authorities are expecting to receive an arrest warrant for Wikileaks created Julian Assange ‘imminently’.

Following a first failed attempt by Swedish prosecutors to draw up a European Arrest Warrant (which was rejected on legal grounds), Mr Assange is due to be seized any day now.

Causing what must be one of the most controversial cyber security situations to date, Assange is actually wanted in Sweden for questioning in connection with sex crimes. Despite this latest revelation, Assange strongly believes this is a ridiculous attempt at a smear campaign as authorities want to drag his name through the mud because they don’t have enough evidence to arrest him for his online activity.

Mark Stephens his British lawyer has tried to play down the situation claiming that police have known exactly where Assange has been staying, despite rumours he was on the run.

“If the prosecutor had any concern for the women making the complaints, any concern about truth or justice, she would pick up the phone and get in touch with Julian – she knows how to do it.”

Furthermore Mr Stephens has stated that his client will challenge any and all allegations against him in relation to sex charges labelling the whole process ‘utterly irregular.’

Only time will tell who’s telling the truth.