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Tuesday, July 19, 2011

FBI arrest 14 in Anonymous hacking investigation | InSecurity Complex - CNET News

July 19, 2011 11:11 AM PDT

FBI arrest 14 in Anonymous hacking investigation

Authorities have arrested 14 people today in the United States in connection with hacking attacks by the Anonymous group of online activists, sources said.

The arrests follow raids earlier in the day on homes in New York, California, New Jersey, and Florida, a law enforcement source told CBS News.

Details were not immediately available on the arrests, which a U.S. government official told CBS News and another unidentified source confirmed to CNET. An FBI spokesman in San Francisco confirmed that "the FBI is part of a nationwide investigation" into hacking, but said he could not comment further. A spokesman with the U.S. Department of Justice in San Francisco said he could not confirm or deny reports of the arrests.

The decentralized Anonymous collective has been targeting computer attacks on government and corporate Web sites, including Monsanto, Arizona Department of Public Safety, the City of Orlando, Sony, Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal, 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.

The hackers primarily use distributed denial-of-service (DDoS0 attacks which are designed to temporarily cripple Web sites. To do that, they enlist supporters to use software on their computers that sends so many requests to access a target Web site that it overwhelms it with traffic, effectively shutting it down.

There have been dozens of arrests globally related to the investigations into Anonymous-related hacking attacks, but it's unclear if any key players in the group are involved or merely random people who have joined the cause. A 16-year-old was arrested late last year in The Netherlands for the DDoS attacks on payment companies who stopped enabling whistleblower site Wikileaks to receive donations. That was followed by five arrests in the U.K. and 40 search warrants carried out in the U.S. in January. In June, three people were arrested in Spain for an attack on a Spanish government site (a Spanish police site was then attacked in retaliation), and 32 people were arrested in Turkey a few days later.

There has also been police activity related to the LulzSec hacking group, which is believed to be a spinoff of Anonymous with whom they have joined forces in attacks under the AntiSec banner. Nineteen-year-old Ryan Cleary was arrested and released on bail in June after being charged with participating in attacks on the UK's Serious Organized Crime Agency,an AntiSec target, and other sites. LulzSec members have denied that Cleary is a member of the group, saying that he only hosted one of the groups chat rooms on his Internet Relay Chat server. Also, an Ohio home was reportedly searched in June.

FBI arrest 14 in Anonymous hacking investigation: FBI arrest 14 in Anonymous hacking investigation | InSecurity Complex - CNET News; CNET Hacker Chart

If you haven't already... Check out that CNET Hacker Chart : Sheet1 (link above). Dang!

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