U.S., British and Dutch police arrest 21 suspects in Anonymous cyber attacks

[News_Editor]

U.S., British and Dutch police arrest 21 suspects in Anonymous cyber attacks

2011-07-20 17:48:22 GMT+7 (ICT)

WASHINGTON, D.C. (BNO NEWS) -- Police in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands have arrested a total of 21 suspects in connection with cyber attacks carried out by hacking group Anonymous, officials said on Wednesday.

Fourteen suspects were arrested on Tuesday in the United States on charges relating to their alleged involvement in a cyber attack last year on the website of PayPal. They were arrested in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio.

The attack on PayPal, which allows payments and money transfers through the internet, was in retaliation for PayPal's decision to close the account belonging to whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. It was claimed by a mysterious group calling itself Anonymous, which supports WikiLeaks.

The suspects were identified as men between the ages of 20 and 42, although the age and name of one of the fourteen people was withheld by court. The men have been charged with various counts of conspiracy and intentional damage to a protected computer.

In addition to the 14 arrests, 21-year-old Scott Matthew was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Florida on charges of intentional damage to a protected computer. He is alleged to have accessed without authorization the Tampa Bay InfraGard website, uploaded three files, and then tweeted about the intrusion and directed visitors to a separate website containing links with instructions on how to exploit the Tampa InfraGard website.

Also arrested was 21-year-old Lance Moore of Las Cruces, New Mexico, who has been charged with allegedly stealing confidential business information stored on AT&T's servers. Moore was a customer support contractor who allegedly exceeded his authorized access to AT&T's servers and downloaded thousands of documents, applications and other files which he then posted on a public file sharing website. It was then released by Lulz Security, a group similar to Anonymous.

Five other arrests were made in Europe, including one 16-year-old boy who was arrested in London on Tuesday. A Scotland Yard spokesman said the arrest was made in connection to Anonymous, but refused to give other details.

The four other suspected members of Anonymous were arrested in the Netherlands. They were identified by prosecutors as men aged 35, 25, 18 and 17. "They are believed to have been responsible for the hacking of several websites, including dating website pepper.nl, the internet telephone and chat company Nimbuzz, and website bronkerk.nl," the prosecutor's office said in a statement.

"The suspects were using the nicknames Ziaolin, Calimero, DutchD3V1L and Time on a private chat channel. Their most important goal was to steal and publish confidential data of government departments and companies," the statement added. "The hacking group operated under the name AntiSec NL (Anti Security Netherlands)."

Prosecutors said the Team High Tech Crime of the Dutch national police was able to track the suspects after entering their chatroom under a secret name. "The suspects were identified in a short time. They were immediately arrested," the statement said, adding that 15 computers, external hard drives, and other data carriers had been confiscated.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2011-07-20

[maidu]

Good, I hope they netted one or both of the British butt plugs who ripped me off last year. One cheated my out of $750 via a scam, after he commandeered a friend of mine's email account. The other used a keylogging program to f.up my online accounts and cause havoc. Though he tried very hard to steal from me, he didn't get much, but the peripheral problems he caused were large. I hope law enforcement comes down like a ton of bricks on cyber thieves. No mercy. 5 years jail time first offense. 15 yrs minimum 2nd offense.

[Ulysses G.]

I hope law enforcement comes down like a ton of bricks on cyber thieves. No mercy.

Hear, hear!

[transam]

I hope law enforcement comes down like a ton of bricks on cyber thieves. No mercy.

Hear, hear!

+1, chuck them off a cliff. Let me know where.

[geriatrickid]

The sad part about this, is that most of these people are bright kids. It is a complete waste of their lives. If convicted, they will have the burden of serious offenses to deal with for the next few decades.

[TAWP]

Good, I hope they netted one or both of the British butt plugs who ripped me off last year. One cheated my out of $750 via a scam, after he commandeered a friend of mine's email account. The other used a keylogging program to f.up my online accounts and cause havoc. Though he tried very hard to steal from me, he didn't get much, but the peripheral problems he caused were large. I hope law enforcement comes down like a ton of bricks on cyber thieves. No mercy. 5 years jail time first offense. 15 yrs minimum 2nd offense.

So someone social-engineer-scammed you and you call it hacking? Ok...and then you got hit by a keylogger, perhaps after dbl-clicking the file nudes.exe that you downloaded...

Excuse me for not calling for harder penalties.

[maidu]

Good, I hope they netted one or both of the British butt plugs who ripped me off last year. One cheated my out of $750 via a scam, after he commandeered a friend of mine's email account. The other used a keylogging program to f.up my online accounts and cause havoc. Though he tried very hard to steal from me, he didn't get much, but the peripheral problems he caused were large. I hope law enforcement comes down like a ton of bricks on cyber thieves. No mercy. 5 years jail time first offense. 15 yrs minimum 2nd offense.

So someone social-engineer-scammed you and you call it hacking? Ok...and then you got hit by a keylogger, perhaps after dbl-clicking the file nudes.exe that you downloaded...

Excuse me for not calling for harder penalties.

perhaps nudes.exe is something that titillates you, but the keylogger probably got in to my computer via a thumb drive at a public internet place.

[TAWP]

You might think that that attack vector would be less stupid...I do not.

[supashot]

Good, I hope they netted one or both of the British butt plugs who ripped me off last year. One cheated my out of $750 via a scam, after he commandeered a friend of mine's email account. The other used a keylogging program to f.up my online accounts and cause havoc. Though he tried very hard to steal from me, he didn't get much, but the peripheral problems he caused were large. I hope law enforcement comes down like a ton of bricks on cyber thieves. No mercy. 5 years jail time first offense. 15 yrs minimum 2nd offense.

Nothing to do with Anonymous group, they attacked corporation not users. Totally different

[Darrel]

Indeed. Anonymous are not cybercriminals, no matter what the US government wants to make people think.

The criminals in this case are the US government, who stopped at nothing to silence Wikileaks, including forcing PayPal and various other financial institutions to stop accepting transactions for them. This is what Anonymous were objecting to, and quite rightly.

[nikster]

Indeed. Anonymous are not cybercriminals, no matter what the US government wants to make people think.

The criminals in this case are the US government, who stopped at nothing to silence Wikileaks, including forcing PayPal and various other financial institutions to stop accepting transactions for them. This is what Anonymous were objecting to, and quite rightly.

What especially pisses me off about that was that the US government did NOT have to force those corporations - all they had to do was ask. So they asked Amazon to shut down the site, and they asked MC and Visa and PayPal to stop accepting payments. And all these corporations immediately bent over and complied.

I expect any corporation I am a customer of to do nothing at all until they receive a court order. Not fall all over themselves when the government comes calling. That's why the USA is now a de facto police state. The secret service asks for anything - they get it! In return, the US secret service engages in industrial espionage and lobbying on behalf of US based companies. It's all a big clusterf***.

There's an old saying where I come from though, and that is, where there is great need, help will arise; and so we see a backlash against all that in WikiLeaks, in the street protests in various countries, in London, and in the News Corp scandal.

PS: This news is pretty old by now, I don't think they actually managed to get any Anon members. One of my favorite stories is how one of the Anon hackers (forgot the name) planted a false lead to some guy in England. A well known forum troll, too. So that guy was in the news as famous Anon hacker, only for the story to get dropped 2 days later. For the lulz!

[Crushdepth]

Have to wonder how many of the arrested are just dummies that were copycatting as "Anonymous" members. I mean really, tweeting about your crime? Very clever.