Anonymous crack-down in
progress.
PARIS (AP) — Twenty-five suspected members
of the loose-knit
Anonymous
hacker movement have been arrested in a sweep
across Europe and South America, Interpol, the
global police agency, said on Tuesday.
and
Spain were carried out by national law-enforcement
officers working under the support of Interpol’s
Latin American Working Group of Experts on
Information Technology Crime, Interpol said in a
statement.
Those arrested, who ranged in age between 17
and 40, are suspected of planning coordinated
cyber-attacks against institutions including
Colombia’s defense ministry and presidential Web
sites, Chile’s Endesa electricity company and
national library, and other targets.
The arrests followed an ongoing
investigation begun in mid-February, which
comprised searches of 40 locations in 15 cities
and included the seizure of 250 pieces of
information technology equipment and mobile
phones, Interpol said.
Among the 25 people arrested were four
suspected Anonymous hackers seized in connection
with attacks on Spanish political party Web
sites, the Spanish police announced. A national
police statement said two servers used by the
group in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic have
been blocked. It said the four arrested included
the suspected manager of Anonymous’s computer
operations in Spain and Latin America, who was
identified only by his initials and the aliases
“Thunder” and “Pacotron.”
The four are suspected of defacing websites,
carrying out denial-of-service attacks and
publishing data online about police assigned to
the royal palace and the premier’s office.
Anonymous has no real membership structure.
Hackers, activists, and supporters can claim
allegiance to its freewheeling principles so it
is not clear what impact the arrests will have.
Some Internet chatter appeared to point to the
possibility of a revenge attack on Interpol’s
Web site, but the police organization’s home
page appeared to be operating normally late
Tuesday.
Interpol, whose headquarters are in Lyon,
France, has no arrest or investigative powers.
It facilitates intelligence sharing to help
police forces around the world work together.
Anonymous, whose genesis can be traced back
to a popular United States image messaging
board, has become increasingly politicized amid
a global clampdown on music piracy and the
international controversy over the publication
of classified documents by WikiLeaks, a group
with which many Anonymous supporters identify.
Authorities in Europe, North America and
elsewhere have made dozens of arrests, and in
retaliation, Anonymous has increasingly attacked
law enforcement, military and
intelligence-linked targets.
The group turned the tables on the
authorities last month by listening in on a
conference call between the F.B.I., Scotland
Yard and other foreign police agencies about
their joint investigation into Anonymous and its
allies.
One Twitter account purportedly associated
with Anonymous’s Brazilian wing said the latest
sweep would fail. “Interpol, you can’t take
Anonymous,” the message read. “It’s an idea.”