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Earlier this month, a group of pro-WikiLeaks hackers known as Anonymous began launching a series of coordinated cyber-attacks against companies that had severed ties with Julian Assange's whistleblowing organization, including MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal. The so-called 'Operation Payback' effectively shut down sites for prolonged periods of time, and added a new wrinkle to the ongoing international controversy surrounding WikiLeaks. And, as it turns out, the FBI has been investigating the campaign for a few weeks, now.
An FBI affidavit obtained by the Smoking Gun shows that the bureau began investigating Anonymous shortly after the group successfully shut down PayPal for several hours. On December 9th, investigators provided FBI authorities with eight IP addresses that were hosting Internet Relay Chat (IRC) sites. Anonymous members allegedly used the IRC platforms to organize the coordinated denial of service attacks. According to investigators, the attacks on PayPal constituted a felony violation of a federal law "unauthorized and knowing transmission of code or commands resulting in intentional damage to a protected computer system."
So far, the bureau has targeted at least two of the eight IP addresses connected to the PayPal attack. One eventually led them to a Dallas-based firm called Tailor Made Services, which specializes in "dedicated server hosting." On December 16th, agents raided the firm, and copied two hard drives from the server. The affidavit, however, does not detail what they found on the drives, nor does it specify whether the investigation led to a suspect. The second IP address led to a California-based Web hosting firm called Hurricane Electric. That investigation, however, is still in progress.
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Comments
2
Subscribe to commentssweffymoDec 30th 2010 12:22PM
Anonymous aren't hackers. They're script kiddies with nothing better to do than to go along with whatever a small and vocal leadership tell them to do. They're the bane of 4Chan and annoy the crap out of everyone else.
guesswhoDec 30th 2010 3:09PM
Let them 'investigate' and see how much good can be done! For every person they apprehend, twenty more will take their place. Anonymous will always fight in the public interest as a reactionary force against the few who seek to impose injustice upon the many. I need not explain why this conflict is just, and - indeed - necessary.
This is not the end, but rather, the beginning. Something big is happening: something bigger than Wikileaks, bigger than Anonymous, bigger than the Pirate Party, bigger than hacktivism or the very Internet itself. We are witnessing a global awakening of conciousness, a movement who's sole purpose is to break the bonds of intellectual slavery.
It will free information to leak through any filter or firewall, to proxy around any bend in our crooked justice system. It is a virtual private network of people who mold themselves to any shape necessary to keep a bloated and corrupt system chasing the shadows, breaking down doors to empty server rooms and tracing IP addresses to a false locations.
But above all, it will make it impossible for corrupt government to function meaningfully.