More "Operation Payback" arrests

In the UK, five males have been arrested in connection with recent attacks on the web sites of PayPal, MasterCard and Amazon. The DDos attacks were apparently in protest against the actions taken by companies and the US government against WikiLeaks and its spokesman Julian Assange; these have been attributed to the "Anonymous" movement. According to a Metropolitan police report, two minors and three young men aged between 19 and 26 years have been arrested.

The coordinated attacks, known as "Operation Payback", took place after these companies, among others, had terminated their relationships with the whistleblower site, following the release of secret US government documents by WikiLeaks. Anonymous, a loose coalition of internet activists centred around the 4Chan imageboard, are apparently behind the attacks.

A BBC report states that the attackers used a freely available tool downloaded from the internet to flood company web sites with requests in an attempt to cripple their servers. The police investigators from the e-crime Unit were able to trace the attackers as the software did not effectively conceal their IP addresses. Two Dutch teenagers were temporarily detained in connection with Operation Payback in December.

See also:

• In defence of hackers and open source, a feature from The H.
• "W.T.F.": CIA and NSA respond to WikiLeaks, a report from The H.
  
• Lessons from WikiLeaks: decentralize, decentralize, decentralize, a feature from The H.

(trk)