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Worldwide coordinated search and arrests warrents against Anonymous hackers
(CNet) – A message posted on Twitter shortly after the arrests and purported to be from an Anonymous supporter stated:
“It doesn’t matter how many people the ‘FBI’ arrest. Whether they are core members or not. #anonymous have started something unstoppable.”Sixteen people were arrested in the United States today in connection with hacking attacks by the Anonymous group of online activists, as well as one person in the U.K. and four people in the Netherlands, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
An indictment filed last week in San Jose, Calif., names 14 people accused of conspiring to intentionally damage protected computers at PayPal last December in retribution for PayPal suspending WikiLeaks’ account to prevent supporters from donating to the whistleblower site. The arrests were made in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico, and Ohio.
In two other separate indictments, a Sarasota, Fla., man was arrested on charges of intentionally damaging a protected computer for allegedly accessing the Web site of InfraGard Tampa Bay, an FBI partner, in June. The complaint alleges that he released instructions on how to exploit the Web site.
Another man was arrested in Las Cruces, N.M., for allegedly stealing confidential business information from AT&T servers and posting it publicly in April. The defendant works as a customer support contractor for AT&T at outsource provider Convergys and believed to be part of the LulzSec hacking Group.
The charge of intentional damage to a protected computer carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine; each count of conspiracy carries a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, the Justice Department said.
Meanwhile, a 16-year-old was arrested in London who goes by the hacker handle “Tflow” and is believed to be a key member of LulzSec.
And on news aggregation site Reddit, someone with the handle “reallyjay” reported that 20 FBI agents with guns drawn raided his or her house with a search warrant today believing that the owner’s son had participated in the Anonymous attack on PayPal.
As part of “Operation Payback,” Anonymous organized a distributed denial-of-service attack that shut down PayPal’s site, as well as that of Visa and MasterCard. PayPal cut WikiLeaks off citing violations of its terms of service after WikiLeaks released a large amount of classified U.S. State Department cables in late November. The hackers primarily use DDoS attacks, which are designed to temporarily cripple Web sites.
The decentralized Anonymous collective has been targeting computer attacks on government and corporate Web sites, including Monsanto, the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the City of Orlando, and Sony, as well as government sites in Egypt, Turkey, and Tunisia. (See our chart of recent hacking attacks here.) Anonymous often issues warnings and statements saying the attacks are done to protest Internet censorship and alleged government corruption or corporate malfeasance.
There has also been police activity related to the LulzSec hacking group, which is believed to be a spinoff of Anonymous, charged with participating in attacks on the U.K.’s Serious Organized Crime Agency.
LulzSec has turned its sights on media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who is embroiled in a phone voice-mail-hacking scandal that led to the closure of his British tabloid The News of the World. The hackers yesterday redirected the home page of The Sun tabloid, also owned by Murdoch, to a fake story claiming Murdoch had died from drugs overdose. The hacking happened after a former News of the World journalist was found dead.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
