The loose-knit group, which refers to its members as hacktivists, has taken on political issues and is not believed to be hacking for personal financial gain. Anonymous has claimed to attack governments who seek to limit freedom the Australian government for its intended implementation of mandatory internet filtering.
The FBI arrested 16 suspects in the United States after executing more than 35 search warrants. Fourteen of the suspects were arrested on charges of intentionally hacking into a protected computer, in a single indictment from California. The arrests were made across the U.S. including in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio.
The indictment alleges that members carried out denial of service (DDoS) attacks against PayPal’s computer servers Codenamed “Operation Avenge Assange,” by the group, the attack was in retribution against PayPal for suspending WikiLeaks accounts. DDoS attacks are the groups favored form of attack which includes overloading websites with requests, forcing them offline temporarily. No money was believed stolen from PayPal.
Authorities arrested two other men on Tuesday in connection with the group. Scott Matthew Arciszewski, also a member of a group called LulzSec, was apprehended in Florida for allegedly hacking into the Tampa Bay InfraGard website. According to the Department of Justice, InfraGard is a public-private partnership for critical infrastructure protection that is sponsored by the FBI. In New Jersey Lance Moore, 21, was detained by the FBI for supposedly hacking into AT&T’s servers and publicly posting the files he obtained.
These have been the first arrests in US after a year long investigation into Anonymous. It has recently been expanded to also investigate LulzSec, a splinter group from Anonymous involved in cyber attacks on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the UK’s Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA
Those arrested in the US face charges of intentional damage to a protected computer which has a maximum sentence of 10 years of prison and a $250,000 fine and conspiracy charges which carry a maximum sentence of 5 years and $250,000 fine.
Five other suspects were arrested in Europe for connection to “Anonymous,” including four members in the Netherlands and a 16 year old boy in London. The four suspects apprehended in the Netherlands call themselves “AntiSec NL,” and sought to retrieve and publish confidential government documents. Authorities were able to track them after a member of the High Tech Crime Team of the Dutch police entered a chat room under a fake name and identified them.
More than 60 people allegedly involved in these groups have been arrested worldwide since the investigation began last year. UK authorities have detained eight members of the groups in the past six months, and 15 people were arrested in Switzerland and Italy.
In order to fight the recent cyber attacks on governments and businesses, a group of eight companies launched a program to train law enforcement agencies to better detect and prevent against attacks. Cyber crime reportedly costs the U.K billions of pounds every year.
