Man arrested in crackdown on pro-WikiLeaks DDoS spree
And then there were six
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Police in the UK have arrested a 22-year-old county Cleveland man in their investigation into web attacks waged by the Anonymous hacking collective against companies accused of retaliating against WikiLeaks, The Telegraph reports.
The unnamed suspect was questioned by specialist computer-crime detectives at a local police station last Wednesday, and was released on bail pending further inquiries. He was the sixth person to be arrested in UK authorities' investigation into “Operation Avenge Assange,” a coordinated assault on PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, Amazon, and other companies that cut off services to WikiLeaks after the whistle-blower website published classified US diplomatic memos. The five others were arrested in late January.
Members of Anonymous engaged in the DDoS, or distributed denial-of-service, attacks using a modified piece of open source software that they dubbed the Low Orbit Ion Canon. The program is used to send a constant stream of data to targeted websites. When enough members use it on poorly secured sites, the sites become unreachable.
LOIC does nothing to anonymize the individual volunteers behind the attacks, meaning those using home or business internet connections are sitting ducks for authorities trying to crack down on the Anonymous operation.
In addition to the six UK suspects, authorities in the US have served at least 40 search warrants as part of their own investigation. Law enforcement officials in France and the Netherlands have also said they are chasing down leads in the attacks. ®
COMMENTS
Anonymous arrest
There were a lot of groups and people launching the same type of attacks on Wikileaks. How many of THEM got arrested?
re Actually, when you do a DDOS attack. #
"You do it with a botnet."
Usually , yeah
But if you've got a thousands strong flock of devoted morons you just use them.
Cannon Fodder
Guaranteed this guy was one of the nameless many who after reading some of the news stories about Wikileaks and Assange thought it’d be a great idea to jump onto the band wagon. He downloaded the software and used it having no knowledge or thought about protecting himself. I would not be surprised that in the interview process he admitted having little or no knowledge of the software and how it worked or even what a DDOS attack actually entailed
Considering the Police did not do a major news release on the arrest indicating they had one of the organizers of the attacks, we can only assume the above. Assuming the above you must wonder why the police continue to waste resources on arresting the sacrificial lambs that so willingly joined the “movement” if for no other reason for the bragging rights with their mates
Don’t reply that he broke a law willingly and therefore must be penalised for his actions. The Police have discretionary powers in these matters. Though it appears more and more often they do not exercise them or exercise them in the wrong situations
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