Russia calls for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to be given the Nobel Peace Prize as Putin lashes out at America



Kremlin takes a dig at the U.S. over Assange's arrest



Facebook and Twitter delete the accounts of cyber activists



Swoop against 'Operation Payback' follows attacks on credit card giants



5,000 'hacktivists' believed to be behind electronic onslaught

Dutch authorities arrest 16-year-old boy suspected of involvement



Jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Russian officials said this afternoon.

The Kremlin urged non-governmental organisations to consider 'nominating Assange as a Nobel Prize laureate'.

A source from inside president Dmitry Medvedev's office told Russian news agencies: 'Public and non-governmental organisations should think of how to help him.

'Maybe, nominate him as a Nobel Prize laureate.'

Anger: Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin and jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange



Targeted: The WikiLeaks homepage. It started to publish the leaked US diplomatic cables last Sunday

The statement appeared to be designed to antagonise Washington over leaked US diplomatic cables. Elsewhere, Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin lashed out at the United States, saying the West had no right to preach to Russia about democracy.

When asked about cables which cast him as Russia's 'alpha-dog' ruler of a corrupt and undemocratic bureaucracy, Putin snapped: 'Do you think the American diplomatic service is a crystal clean source of information? Do you think so?'

He then went on to criticise the West over the arrest of Assange, who turned himself in to the authorities in Britain this week.

Operation: Payback was formed in September to target groups opposed to internet piracy

'If it is full democracy, then why have they hidden Mr Assange in prison? That's what, democracy?' Putin said.

'So, you know, as they say in the countryside, some people's cows can moo, but yours should keep quiet. So I would like to shoot the puck back at our American colleagues,' Putin said at a briefing with his French counterpart Francois Fillon.

The phrase is a colloquial term which is a Russian equivalent of 'the pot calling the kettle black'.

The leaked U.S. cables cast Putin as a ruler who allows a venal elite of corrupt officials and crooked spies to siphon off cash from the world's biggest energy producer.

Today Facebook and Twitter deleted the accounts of cyber activists who targeted Visa and other Internet payment sites that sought to block the WikiLeaks website after its release of U.S. diplomatic cables.

Facebook confirmed it had removed the activists' Operation Payback site on Thursday because it was promoting a distributed denial of service attack -- an illegal form of freezing websites. Twitter declined to comment.

The swoop against Operation Payback's self-described campaigners for Internet freedom followed their online attacks on the credit card giants.

Tonight Dutch authorities said they had arrested a 16-year-old boy suspected of being involved in the digital attack.

In a statement, the prosecutors' office said the teenager is believed to have participated in attacks by WikiLeaks supporters on the websites.



The statement said the unnamed youth was arrested in The Hague, but did not give full details of what part he played.



Experts said the outages were unlikely to have much effect on the pro-WikiLeaks cyber campaign as activists were using separate chatrooms to organise.

A representative of one of the groups involved in the online campaign said on Thursday that more cyber attacks in reprisal for attempts to block the WikiLeaks website were likely.

On Thursday, supporters of WikiLeaks were plotting attacks on online payment service PayPal and other perceived enemies of the publisher, which has angered U.S. authorities by starting to release details of 250,000 confidential cables.

Up to 5,000 hackers have combined under the 'Operation Payback' umbrella to target Visa and Mastercard

A screen shot of the Mastercard website showing technical problems yesterday afternoon

Amazon, Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and arch-WikiLeaks critic Senator Joe Leiberman were also cited as targets.

'The campaign is not over from what I've seen, it's still going strong. More people are joining,' a spokesman calling himself 'Coldblood' told BBC Radio 4.

The speaker, who had an English accent, said he was aged 22 and was a software engineer.

'Anonymous has targeted mainly companies which have decided for whatever reason not to deal with WikiLeaks. Some of the main targets involve Amazon, MasterCard, Visa and PayPal.'

The websites of credit-card giants Mastercard have already been brought down through distributed denial-of-service attacks that temporarily disable computer servers by bombarding them with requests.

Demonstrators take to the streets during a rally in support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Brisbane today

In a statement on Thursday, Mastercard said although there was a limited interruption of some online services, cardholders could continue using cards for transactions worldwide. Its main processing systems were not compromised, the statement said.

AnonOps also claimed responsibility for bringing down Visa's site, which was temporarily unavailable in the United States, but later restored.

In an online letter, Anonymous said its activists were neither vigilantes nor terrorists.



It added: 'The goal is simple: Win the right to keep the Internet free of any control from any entity, corporation, or government.'

THE VOLUNTEER NETWORK OF HACKERS CALLED 'ANONYMOUS' WHICH HAS BROUGHT CHAOS TO THE INTERNET

Target: Sarah Palin's website has been attacked

The hackers targeting Visa and Mastercard work by overwhelming a websites' servers with enormous volumes of traffic, dubbed 'distributed denial-of-service' attack.

Operation: Payback supporters volunteer their computers to become part of a remotely controlled network, called a 'botnet'.

This allows the hackers to disable targeted websites by directing millions of requests for information from multiple sources, making the internet site inaccessible to other users.

Anonymous - the shadowy group behind the attacks - has handed thousands of followers a user-friendly tool to download and join the assault.

'Think of it like a voluntary botnet,' says an installation guide for the tool.

Anyone taking part in the cyber attacks can then claim they have a computer virus if they are accused of participating.

The chances of being arrested for using the tool are said to be 'next to zero' as a result.

If users follow the instructions for the Anonymous botnet, once it is up and running, they are told to: 'Sit back and watch the show.'

Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet said the Swedish government's website was down for a short time overnight in the latest apparent attack.

Sweden has issued an arrest warrant for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange over sex crimes and he is in jail in London, awaiting an extradition hearing.

Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, has been hailed as an advocate of free speech by supporters, but now finds himself fighting serious sexual allegations made by two women in Sweden.

Assange will have another court appearance next Tuesday and his supporters assert he is being victimised for his work.

In the Internet Relay chat channel where activists coordinated the attacks, conversations were short and to the point.



Participants asked what the target should be and reported progress. Some bemoaned the fact that paypal.com remained up despite efforts to bring down its transactions server.

'The only thing most of these CEOs understand is the bottom line. You have to hit them in the bank account, or not at all,' said one participant called Cancer.

WikiLeaks is continuing to drip-feed cables into the public domain despite the legal woes of its founder.

Those released on Thursday showed U.S. diplomats reporting that the illicit diamond trade in Zimbabwe had led to the murder of thousands, enriched those close to President Robert Mugabe and been financed in part by the central bank.

Assange's online supporters hit the corporate website of MasterCard on Wednesday in reprisal for its blocking of donations to the WikiLeaks website.

'We are glad to tell you that http://www.mastercard.com/ is down and it's confirmed!' said an entry on the Twitter feed of a group calling itself AnonOps.

'Coldblood' said a battle was under way to protect the Internet.



'I see this as becoming a war, but not your conventional war. This is a war of data. We are trying to keep the Internet free and open for everyone, just the way the Internet always has been,' 'Coldblood' added.

Assange's main London lawyer has denied that the WikiLeaks founder ordered the attacks.

'It's very hard to get hold of anyone from WikiLeaks.



'The only (person) you could really get hold of was Julian, but unfortunately he's not available at the moment,' said 'Coldblood'.

Have you been affected by the MasterCard cyber attacks? Ring 0207 9386059