Five arrested over 'Anonymous' web attacks

[nsane.forums]

Five males arrested under the Computer Misuse Act for Operation Payback attacks

The Metropolitan Police force has arrested five people suspected of involvement in the recent Operation Payback distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks by the Anonymous hacktivist group on various web sites.

The five males, aged 15, 16, 19, 20 and 26, were arrested Thursday morning by the Met’s Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) in a co-ordinated swoop on addresses in the West Midlands, Northants, Herts, Surrey and London.

The Met said that the investigation was being carried out “in conjunction with international law enforcement agencies in Europe and the US”, with the suspects detained under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

All five have been taken to local police stations where they remain in custody, it added.

The arrests come after a series of DDoS attacks were launched at the end of 2010 by the online hacktivist collective Anonymous, on organisations perceived to have deliberately obstructed the work of WikiLeaks. These included Visa, MasterCard and PayPal.

The Dutch High Tech Crime Unit has already swooped twice in December to arrest a 16 and 19 year-old in connection with the attacks. The suspects are thought to have downloaded the Low Orbit Ion Canon (LOIC) tool provided by Anonymous to turn their PCs into botnets and carry out the attacks.

Security experts have said in the past that this makes it easy for police to track them as LOIC does not mask the IP address of the user.

View: Original Article

[Atasas]

Five arrested over 'Anonymous' web attacks

BBC 28 01 2011

Five men have been arrested over a spate of recent web attacks carried out in support of Wikileaks.

The five males are being held after a series of arrests at residential addresses in the West Midlands, Northamptonshire, Hertfordshire, Surrey and London this morning.

The men were arrested in relation to "recent and ongoing" attacks by an online group that calls itself "Anonymous".

Targets included the websites of PayPal, Mastercard and Amazon.

Anonymous used a technique called "distributed denial of service" (DDoS) attacks in a bid to take the sites offline.

DDoS attacks bombard a website with data until they cannot respond, rendering them inaccessible.

Not all the group's attempts succeeded.

In December, they abandoned an attack on the online retailer Amazon after it could not muster enough people to take part.

The group used an online tool called LOIC to allow members to easily take part in the bombardments of websites.

The site from which it could be downloaded reassured people that there was "next to zero" chance that anyone who used it would be caught.

But a study found that the tool makes no attempt to hide a user's net address which would lead any investigator almost straight to an attacker.

Thousands of people are thought to have downloaded versions of the tool.

The Anonymous group maintained that they were not hackers but "average internet citizens" who felt motivated to act because of perceived injustices against the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks.

Many of the targets had withdrawn services from Wikileaks before they were attacked.

In recent weeks the group has turned its attention to targets in Tunisia and Egypt, attacking official sites in both countries in support of anti-government protests.

The five were arrested this morning at 0700 GMT in connection with offences under the Computer Misuse Act.

Three teenagers aged 15, 16 and 19, were arrested with two men, aged 20 and 26 in coordinated arrests.

This investigation by the Central e-Crime Unit was carried out in conjunction with law enforcement agencies in Europe and the US.

All five have been taken to local police stations where they remain in custody.

It is not the first arrests in relation to the attacks. In December two Dutch teenagers were taken into custody and subsequently released over allegations that they had helped coordinate them.

What is Anonymous?

'Anonymous' describes itself as an 'internet gathering'. The term is used to describe a collective of people who come together online, commonly to stage a protest.

The groups vary in size and make-up depending on the cause. Members often identify themselves in web videos by wearing the Guy Fawkes masks popularised by the book and film V for Vendetta.

Its protests often take the form of disrupting websites and services.

Its use of the term Anonymous comes from a series of websites frequented by members, such as the anarchic image board 4Chan.

These allow users to post without having to register or provide a name. As a result, their comments are tagged "Anonymous".

In the past, groups have staged high-profile protests against plans by the Australian government to filter the internet and the Church of Scientology.

Many Anonymous protests tackle issues of free speech and preserving the openness of the net.

[DKT27]

Staff Note: Threads merged

Foolish police catching Robin Hoods of the internet. -_-

[DKT27]

Anonymous: UK arrests are a 'declaration of war'

Anonymous has issued a warning to the UK government after five young men suspected of being connected to the group were arrested on Thursday.

Anonymous has warned the UK government that the arrest of five people allegedly associated with the group was a 'sad mistake'.

The group, which has claimed responsibility for a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks launched in support of whistle-blowing site Wikileaks, said it viewed the arrests as "a declaration of war" by the British authorities.

"Anonymous believes... that pursuing this direction is a sad mistake on your behalf. Not only does it reveal the fact that you do not seem to understand the present-day political and technological reality, we also take this as a serious declaration of war from yourself, the UK government, to us, Anonymous, the people," the group said in a statement (PDF) on Thursday.

"Our advice to you, the UK government, is to take this statement as a serious warning from the citizens of the world," it added.

The Office of Cyber Security (OCS), the part of the Cabinet Office that co-ordinates the UK's computer defence and attack efforts, said that intelligence service GCHQ was monitoring the situation through the GovCertUK computer emergency response team.

"These arrests are an operational matter for the Metropolitan Police Service," an OCS spokesman told ZDNet UK. "[The government] continues to monitor the situation and the potential threat to UK government websites from groups of this nature."

GCHQ, through the CESG information assurance agency and GovCertUK, provides government departments with guidance on how to protect against, detect and mitigate various types of cyberattack. It also acts as a single point for reports of security incidents on the government network.

Anonymous has said it was behind recent successful DDoS attacks on payments processors, which brought down the websites of companies including MasterCard, Visa and PayPal. It is also thought to be behind cyberattacks on government websites, including those belonging to Tunisia.

Computer Misuse Act

In its statement, the group characterised the UK arrests as "exactly like arresting somebody for attending a peaceful demonstration in their hometown" and said that DDoS attacks are not akin to hacking. It also rejected the idea that DDoS attacks are crimes under the UK's Computer Misuse Act.

In response, William Malcolm, a computer law expert and senior associate at Pinsent Masons solicitors, argued that DDoS is prohibited under the legislation. "The Computer Misuse Act was effectively amended to take in denial-of-service attacks, by amendments to the Police and Justice Bill 2006," he said.

View: Original Article

[Atasas]

on one hand creating chaos is bad, but heck, they worth that!

Next thing is to have everyone monitored or bend down to Corporate greedy evils?

Wish them luck to get out in one piece