News quiz: The week in tech

10.12.2010

Question 5: In retaliation, "Anonymous" launched a series of DDoS attacks on sites it deemed responsible for the persecution of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. Which of the following was not among its targets?

Correct Answer: Facebook

Hacktivists operating on behalf of WikiLeaks attacked the site of Swiss bank PostFinance, which froze Julian Assange's account last week because (it says) the WikiLeaker gave them a bogus address when signing up. Sen. Joe Lieberman, who pressured Amazon to boot WikiLeaks from its hosting service, found his website under an attack that took down all of Senate.gov for a short period. PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa all saw various parts of their sites go offline due to DDoSing. But Facebook, which suspended Anonymous's Operation Payback page for violating its terms of use, has yet to suffer the wrath.

Question 6: Another week, another Facebook meme -- what was the Facebook crowd doing en masse now?

Correct Answer: Adopting cartoon characters for profile pictures