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Aussies against pro-Wikileaks DDoS

ZDNet Australia readers do not support retaliatory hacking or distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on companies which have cut off Wikileaks, according to a global ZDNet survey.
Written by ZDNet Australia team , Contributor

ZDNet Australia readers do not support retaliatory hacking or distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on companies which have cut off Wikileaks, according to a global ZDNet survey.

Companies such as PayPal, Mastercard, Visa and the Bank of America have denied Wikileaks their services, forcing the notorious leaks site to look elsewhere to collect its funds.

The actions of these companies resulted in successful DDoS attacks by a group called Anonymous as a form of protest against the companies.

Wikileaks said that it would "neither condemn nor applaud" the attacks.

"We believe they are a reflection of public opinion on the actions of the targets," Wikileaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson said.

However, it seems that Australians don't necessary agree with hacking or conducting DDoS attacks on companies which turned away from Wikileaks as a legitimate form of protest.

Only 27.7 per cent of the 654 Australians who answered ZDNet's poll thought that such actions were legitimate. 61 per cent were against such attacks, while 11 per cent had no opinion.

The poll was also conducted across ZDNet sites worldwide, receiving over 10,000 responses.

The US respondents thought similarly to Australians, with 65 per cent being against retaliatory attacks. However, France and Germany were split on the issue, with more people being for DDoS attacks in France (45.5 per cent) than against (44.1 per cent). There were 42.6 per cent of Germans for attacks and 47 per cent against.

Japan voiced the most disapproval about the DDoS, with 74 per cent of Japanese respondents being against such actions and only 12.4 per cent believing they are a legitimate form of protest.

Wikileaks Poll results

Another interesting point from the survey was that the leaks had almost no effect on how people saw their data security.

Only 23.9 per cent of Australian respondents said that Wikileaks had made them rethink their data security, compared to 19.6 per cent of French respondents, 20.6 per cent of German respondents, 25.2 per cent of Japanese respondents and 18.8 per cent of UK respondents.

The odd one out was the US, with 42 per cent of respondents saying that Wikileaks had made them reconsider their organisation's security.

The majority of Australian, Chinese, French, German, Japanese and UK respondents agreed with the publication of confidential documents by Wikileaks: 83.9 per cent of Australian respondents said Wikileaks had done the right thing.

Japan and the USA ,on the other hand, weren't so sure. Only 59.8 per cent of Japanese respondents and 51 per cent of US respondents believed the publication of the documents was correct.

There were a swathe of other questions asked in the poll. The results for the entire survey can be found below. ZDNet China did not ask the last two questions of its respondents, so there is no data for China for those questions.

The poll attracted 654 Australian respondents, 1095 Chinese respondents, 3700 French respondents, 808 German respondents, 749 Japanese respondents, 212 UK respondents and 4096 US respondents.

Wikileaks Poll results
Wikileaks Poll results
Wikileaks Poll results
Wikileaks Poll results
Wikileaks Poll results
Wikileaks Poll results
Wikileaks Poll results
Wikileaks Poll results
Wikileaks Poll results
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