Arrests and raids passed in Florida, California, and New Jersey and were aimed toward targets suspected to be members of the hacking collective that has hit the headlines in recent months for a series of high-profile attacks. Computers and alternative equipment were conjointly seized at many addresses in the big apple as native agents executed search warrants in the big apple town and Long Island, however – no arrests were created.
"These search warrants are being executed in reference to an ongoing FBI investigation," a replacement York FBI spokesman said. a lot of arrests might follow, legal sources said.
A spokesman for the Metropolitan police confirmed that the London arrest was linked to the US operation. He added: "Officers from the Met's computer's E-crime unit arrested a sixteen year-old male on Tuesday afternoon on suspicion of breaching the pc Misuse Act. He was arrested at an address in south London and remains in custody at a central London police station."
The actions on each side of the Atlantic followed raids aimed toward members of Anonymous that have taken place in others elements of the globe, together with Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Turkey. over thirty individuals thought to be linked to the cluster are arrested.
Anonymous hit the mainstream media headlines in December when it rallied to the support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Asange. it's an agenda of sympathy for freedom of knowledge and attacked the websites of corporations like Visa, MasterCard and PayPal in protest at those corporations severing ties to WikiLeaks and creating it troublesome for Assange to lift cash from supporters.
Since then hacking has become a hot topic within the US and also there are alternative cyber-attacks by Anonymous members or supporters on targets like the CIA and Fox News and the Arizona Department of Corrections. The latter was targeted out of anger at Arizona's efforts to crack down on illegal immigrants.
Often, once successful attacks, individuals claiming to be a part of the cluster can post messages on the social messaging service Twitter boasting of the attacks or providing proof that they hit their targets.
Hacking comes in numerous forms, however a standard methodology utilized by Anonymous has been a "distributed denial of service" attack where members produce a pc network that bombards a web site with requests for data and eventually overwhelms it with traffic. Such an attack is against the law.
Another hacking collective, referred to as LulzSec, has conjointly been the target of law enforcement ire in America. Last month, FBI agents raided an address in Iowa and questioned a lady concerning attainable links to the cluster. LulzSec hit the headlines on Monday when it hacked the web site of the Sun newspaper. It later claimed to possess obtained password data for the e-mail accounts of senior News International govts together with former chief executive Rebekah Brooks, who is at the centre of the phone-hacking storm surrounding the corporate.
