Saturday 16 April 2011
New arrest over Anonymous' pro-WikiLeaks attacks
Police have made a sixth arrest in their investigation of Anonymous, the online activist collective that launched a series of cyber attacks on major firms it saw as anti-WikiLeaks.
Anonymous is battling attempts to unmask its leaders Photo
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The new suspect, a 22-year-old man from
The five original suspects - three teenage boys and two men - have also all been bailed again in the last 48 hours, to reappear at police stations in June.
They were arrested at addresses in the West Midlands, Northamptonshire, Hertfordshire, Surrey and
They are suspected of involvement in cyber attacks on the websites of Amazon, Bank of
The firms were targeted after they cut off services to WikiLeaks, amid controversy over its release of classified
Anonymous saw the moves as an affront to free speech online, and in chatrooms planned Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks in revenge.
Members downloaded a specially-developed piece of software - dubbed the Low Orbit Ion Cannon - to participate in "Operation Avenge Assange". The software was designed to effectively shut down the websites by bombarding their servers with requests for data.
But the impact was limited
Since the attacks international law enforcement agencies have been cooperating on an investigation that has also led to the arrest of alleged Anonymous members in
The collective had already caught the attention of British authorities before its WikiLeaks-related attacks, however.
Scotland Yard's Police Central e-Crime Unit began inquiries after similar DDoS attacks by Anonymous in September, on organisations connected to the entertainment industry. Its targets included the BPI and ACS
Anonymous, which emerged more than three years ago from the anarchic web forum 4Chan.org, is also battling other attempts to unmask its members.
In February it hacked into HBGary Federal, a government computer security contractor that claimed to have identified its leaders. The firm's chief executive was forced to step down after the hackers stole his emails and published them online.
And recently a group claiming to be made up of disgruntled former Anonymous members has published a dossier its says contains the true identities of senior figures. Several are listed as living in
Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2011
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"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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