Attacks Anonymous?
The Metropolitan Police will probe the attempts of hacktivist group Anonymous to attack firms like MasterCard and PayPal which refused to cooperate with WikiLeaks.
According to The Guardian, Scotland Yard has been keeping a close eye on the loose-knit group in recent months as it has launched high profile attacks on firms, lawyers and even the Swedish government.
Downing Street is reportedly bracing itself for attacks on government websites, but Anonymous seems to be changing its tactics in favour of DDoS attacks via retro fax machines.
The Met told the newspaper:"Earlier this year the Metropolitan police received a number of allegations of denial of service cyber attacks against several companies by a group calling themselves Anonymous. We are investigating these criminal allegations and our investigation is ongoing.
"The Metropolitan police service is monitoring the situation relating to recent and ongoing denial of service attacks, and will investigate where appropriate."
Anonymous has attacked firms which cased business links with the whistle blowing website in what is known as ‘Operation Payback' estimated to be backed by some 1,000 hacktivists including semi-professional criminal hackers.
While WikiLeaks has not supported Anonymous' attacks outright, its editor, Julian Assange has reportedly called for his supporters, to defend WikiLeaks from ‘instruments of foreign policy' and apparently specifically picked on credit card companies, which have stopped WikiLeaks collecting donations.
It is thought that 3 people have been arrested for their suspected part in the attacks in the past week, including 2 Dutch teenagers and experts believe most of those involved are teenagers from around the world.
Experts have told The Guardian they believe around 90 percent of Anonymous use an application called Low Orbit Ion Canon (LOIC) to launch the attacks as downloads of the tool grew ‘substantially' last week.
While Anonymous claims to be a disparate band of freedom fighters, operating in ‘organised chaos' experts now reportedly believe there is a core of key decision makers who are leading the masses in choosing which sites to target.
Meanwhile, an attack that revealed some 1.3 million email addresses and passwords of users of super-blog Gawker, has reportedly been linked to s splinter group of Anonymous. The attack, which caused havoc and many people to change their log-in details, will apparently be investigated by The FBI.
