The Justice Department says 14 people have been arrested for allegedly mounting a cyberattack on the Web site of PayPal in retaliation for suspending the accounts of WikiLeaks.

The cyberattacks on PayPal's Web site by the group Anonymous followed the release by WikiLeaks last November of thousands of classified State Department cables.

Anonymous is a loosely organized group of hackers sympathetic to WikiLeaks. It has claimed responsibility for attacks against corporate and government Web sites worldwide.

The group also claims credit for disrupting the Web sites of Visa and MasterCard in December when the credit card companies stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange.

The 14 were arrested in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio.