back to article UK cops arrest five in Anonymous attacks probe

Scotland Yard has arrested five people under the Computer Misuse Act as part of its investigation into alleged attacks by the Anonymous hacking collective. The five males - aged, 15, 16, 19, 20 and 26 - were arrested in a series of co-ordinated raids on Thursday morning by detectives from Scotland Yard's Police Central e-Crime …

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  1. Dick Emery
    Big Brother

    VFM as always

    I see the UK police as usual are using their time and tax payers money wisely.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Dick Emery

      >>"I see the UK police as usual are using their time and tax payers money wisely."

      Indeed they are.

      Nipping some irresponsible youths in the bud who think their armchair outrage is more important than other people running lawful businesses seems like a good use of resources to me.

      Do nothing, and a kid might take that as a green light to do whatever they want whenever they feel (or are told to feel) annoyed at one or other organisation, achieving nothing while costing grown-ups money and inconvenience.

      If they give a decent slapping to a few of them now, that could discourage an awful lot of others in future.

      Seems like money well spent to me.

      1. dave 81
        Flame

        @AC

        So you posted you pro american pro police state BS anonymously?

        what are hiding?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Stop

          @Dave 81

          Ah, yes, because "Dave 81" is very identifying. It doesn't really matter what a poster's name is, unless you are planning on discrediting posts by person X. And yes, I chose AC for the intended irony.

        2. Scorchio!!
          Thumb Down

          Re: @AC

          This variant of the argumentum ad hominem is of the most vacuous and weak quality, employing as it does the bogus guilt by association concept. You however gained 100 points on my irony meter for being as anonymous as ac, 'Dave 81'. What's that, didn't look in the mirror as you typed that post, no self awareness, no irony, no sense of laws? Oh I am truly surprised, no really I am.

          1. Shakje
            FAIL

            Personally I do support some of the attacks

            and don't think that they're without justification (in some cases), and I can understand that at some level it is a response by people who feel powerless to express their discontent in any other way.

            But (and it's a very very big but), if you participate you know that it's illegal. Regardless of who you're attacking and whether they're breaking the law, attacking them is illegal. If you do choose to participate then you can't have any complaint if the police catch you.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Stop

            @Scorchio!!

            And your attempt at proof by verbosity is also very weak. If you read my entire post, instead of picking and choosing the parts you wanted, you might have seen my last sentence: "And yes, I chose AC for the intended irony." But, obviously you didn't. Additionally, you probably would have been wise not to use a name like "Scorchio!!", lest you destroy any remaining credulity in your already shaky argument.

            Now I'm assuming that we will now see an entire chain of anonymous posters "calling the kettle black."

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          @'dave 81'

          >>"So you posted you pro american pro police state BS anonymously?

          Which bit of your paranoid imagination did you conjure 'pro american' from?

      2. Scorchio!!
        Thumb Up

        Re: @Dick Emery

        > >>"I see the UK police as usual are using their time and tax payers money wisely."

        >> Indeed they are

        There will be a lot more of this. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation lawbreaking is merely that. With luck the punishment will make the criminals think. Should they be guilty and as such guilty, of course.

      3. Semihere

        @AC

        "Nipping some irresponsible youths in the bud who think their armchair outrage is more important than other people running lawful businesses seems like a good use of resources to me."

        Lawful businesses? You're calling ACS:Law a lawful business? I certainly LOL'd. That, my dear friend, has yet to be proven in the ongoing court cases and investigations into their operations. Except, of course, for the illegal breaches of the Data Protection Act which they are already demonstrably guilty of.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          @Semihere

          >>"Lawful businesses? You're calling ACS:Law a lawful business?"

          You're sure it was the attacks against ACS:law that were the reason for the arrests?

          In any case, even regarding ACS, as you say yourself, legal action there is ongoing, and it's definitely not up to some mob of groupthinking teenagers to decide which businesses are and aren't legitimate, or what kind of sanctions should be taken against them.

          Taking the law into one's own hands isn't legal, and can lead to prosecution, often for very good reason.

          One of the main reasons for having law in the first place is to avoid the stupidity and escalation and violence and waste that happens when people decide for themselves exactly what they should be allowed to do.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    And yet..

    And yet they can't arrest the actual cyber criminals and spammers who continue to operate out of the UK with zero police interference.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Down

      Ha!

      Possibly because actual cyber criminals and spammers dont use badly written non-anoniymising DDOS tools that echo's your IP address to all and sundry.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      And yet..

      And yet they can't arrest cure world hunger and stop whaling either.

      "Officer, how can you be arresting me for beating my wife when the neighbor has so obviously parked in an improper manner and should be given a ticket?"

      There are plenty of remotely rational arguments to try and excuse these kids' behavior (arguing that it was an act civil disobedience as part of a political protest seemed to work OK for the folks who tried to block coal trains going to power plants in the UK a couple years back IIRC), but arguing that completely unrelated actor A's completely unrelated illegal behavior somehow excuses actor B is probably the absolute worst pile of nonsense I have seen.... ever.

  3. John Ford
    Unhappy

    Priorities

    This shows the police can move when there is political will for them to act. A pity they can't apply the same resources to spammers, ebay crooks, hawkers of stolen property on Gumtree etc. who make life crap for regular folks.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Boffin

      Really? Does it now?

      1.) Receive network logs from effected sites (probably with certain addresses highlighted and ready to go and their ISP already listed)

      2.) In the US at least, send list over to the court to get an order for the ISPs to match addresses to names

      3.) Receive names back from ISPs, prep charges and send them to a Grand Jury (not always necessary AFAIK) to issue a warrant for arrest

      It's easy - it's essentially the same thing the copyright lawyers do and those folks aren't rocket scientists by any stretch of the imagination.

      That said, it by no means guarantees a conviction or says they're really guilty at this point, but if 10,000 requests an hour to MasterCard.com were coming from your personal internet connection you shouldn't be surprised if the party van pulls up to your house to have a chat.

      Speaking of, BRB FBI

    2. Scorchio!!
      FAIL

      Re: Priorities

      "This shows the police can move when there is political will for them to act. A pity they can't apply the same resources to spammers, ebay crooks, hawkers of stolen property on Gumtree etc. who make life crap for regular folks."

      Yet, considering how certain you seem, you provide no unbroken chain of reason, starting with first principles and evidence, and ending in a logically watertight conclusion, from the perspective of evidence and rationality. Just a throw away claim without anything to back it.

      According to your reasoning all of the IT coppers should prioritise their work to suit your needs, and not deal with large, organised DDoS attacks. What's that you say? Did I hear you say that they were either only fun or perhaps done for the right reasons? Oh, you are a police officer and know how to task units do you?

  4. Dennis Wilson
    WTF?

    Confused.

    As i recall from my dark and dingy memory box Anonymous used a botnet as part of their DDoS attacks. Hell, a DDoS cannot work without a few thousand infected computers. Judging by the ages of those arrested i recon thay have zeroed in on the bots and not the guilty people.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Funny

      Not to say they're guilty but their ages are an exact fit for how I'd imagined Anonymous "hacktivists".

      1. david wilson

        @AC

        >>"Not to say they're guilty but their ages are an exact fit for how I'd imagined Anonymous "hacktivists"."

        Or should that be 'acnevists'?

    2. Colin Miller

      aiding and abetting

      IANAL, but it seems to me that deliberately installing a botnet client on your computer is, at best, aiding and abetting those who'd use the botnet to attack other computers.

      Unless the botnet clients keep logs of who's been controlling it, it is hard to track back further. It might have been better to ask/subpoena the ISP to log all traffic to the botnet clients, in order to track down the command&control machines, if it's not done via another proxy.

      Do you really blame the police for starting with the lowest hanging fruit? It's like arresting the local small-time drug dealer; the visible face, but there's another level of dealer behind him.

    3. a cynic writes...

      Thing is it's an "opt-in" botnet...

      The version of LOIC that they used allows remote control* - so {naive recruit / couragous young adult} runs the program, connects to IRC where older heads take control and point it at the target of the day. Given they ran the damn thing they've no viable defence and since LOIC doesn't shield its point of origin the investigation consists of reading some log files.

      Daft sods...

      *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Avenge_Assange#Tools_and_communication

    4. Ivan Frimmel 1
      Paris Hilton

      Don't be confused..

      LOIC is a freely available DDOS tool that simply generates traffic - it does not make any attempt to hide the IP of the attacked - it is NOT a botnet. You have to download it - install it - point it at a target and make it do it's thing. On the other hand Anonymous purportedly ALSO has control/access of a DDOS tool which is a botnet ( a weaponised version of LOIC - dunno ? ) - point being is that Anonymous orchestrated this attack via a website anonops.net and IRC and threw all those that were not smart enough to know or care (read: average enraged hormonal 15-year old) that running LOIC is not secure firmly under the bus.

      Paris - because she would have run LOIC..

  5. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Anonymous? Nope.

    More fool them for not using a VPN. Bazinga.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    'Coordinated raids'? Really?

    Arresting children. This is what it's come to. Very sad.

    1. Dave Murray
      Thumb Down

      Do something illegal, get arrested

      If they break the law, which they have, then they should be arrested. Nothing sad about it.

      I would question your definition of children. These individuals were all 15 or over. At that age they drink, smoke, fuck and assault people. Hardly the behaviour of children imo.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Grenade

        Not quite....

        "These individuals were all 15 or over. At that age they drink, smoke, fuck and assault people."

        These were guys who hang out on 4Chan. I think you can remove fuck from that list.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I expect they may have the same problem as ACS Law

    in that they can't prove who was actually using the network connection.

    1. a cynic writes...

      Not really...

      With ACS Law it was a civil case - this is a criminal investigation where plod has undoubtedly gathered evidence in the form of hardware (the word raids being a hint).

      So all they have to do is show a jury a machine that has (or has recently had) LOIC installed on it linked to whatever login the kid in question was using. Not the most taxing piece of computer forensics I'd have thought.

      1. Ragarath

        So who was using that login?

        I would like to see that proven. Most households I would have thought have 1 login for the whole family (this is what I see on my rounds to fix them.) Probe that it was a, b, or c using it at that time and installed that bit of software?

        Unless they blabbed online to their mates (where it was logged) it would be very hard to prove. IANAL but this is easy to see. If they are the only one using said computer then fine, easy go straight to jail do not pass go.

      2. ElReg!comments!Pierre

        LOIC is not illegal

        You'd have to prove that LOIC was used by the kid in question AND to conduct DDOS attacks against a 3rd-party server.

        Before the idiotic comments: yes, LOIC does have legitimate uses.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          LOIC is illegal in the UK?

          Actually, it is illegal in the UK to the best of my understanding. The distinction between most tools that we have as techs and script kiddies have as "hacking tools" is purely down to how they are used.

          If script kiddies were caught by tracing IP addresses back to the source from a server that was DDOS'd, then finding a tool that launched that DDOS then they are probably screwed just on on possession. However, I suspect that most script kiddies are also going to have login details saved for 4 chan etc. that prosecutors can then point out to a Jury as proof that the person downloaded the tool.

          Even allowing for the script kiddies pleading not guilty and then lying under oath then I think they are likely to be found guilty. (especially if they "deleted" the tool to cover their tracks not thinking of digital forensics...)

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Prove it was A, B or C

            Given that the case has to be proven 'beyond reasonable doubt' and not beyond _all_ doubt, it may not be as hard as you think.

            If the family consists of Dad, Mum, 15 year old teeny, 10 year old sister, it shouldn't be too hard to convince a Jury that they are the most likely culprit. Of course if there's two teenagers in the house it gets harder.

            Given that they appear to be stereotypical script Kiddies I'd imagine there's probably a lot of logged IM's, Forum Posts saying "Guess What I did".

            All speculation at this point though, for all we know they could all have kept diaries with an entry saying "Today I helped Anonymous DDoS Visa"!

  8. mhenriday
    Unhappy

    Warned those chaps - start by posting to the Reg

    as an «Anonymous Coward» and it's all downhill from there. But listen to the voice of age and wisdom, nay that they flatly refused to do !...

    Henri

  9. Tom 38

    First they came for the script kiddies

    and I whooped with joy.

    1. There's a bee in my bot net

      That made me lol

      I know it shouldn't, but it did... Soz

  10. Hooch181

    And nothing of value was lost...

    Police just after the low hanging fruit!

    One thing I do want to know? How come none of the people doing the DDOS against Wikileaks have been tracked down? They've broken the law as well.

    1. Demosthenese

      Asymmetric Policing

      Because Wikileaks is not a financial institution. Compare the sentences likely to be handed out for stealing an individual's £10k car and stealing £10k from a bank.

      1. Ivan Frimmel 1
        FAIL

        RE: Asymmetric Policing

        "Because Wikileaks is not a financial institution. Compare the sentences likely to be handed out for stealing an individual's £10k car and stealing £10k from a bank."

        Not sure what you mean here - they Anonymous are in no way affiliated with Wikileaks nor did they target Wikileaks. They did target Visa, Paypal, and various other commercial organisation. So .. the gods of commerce are going to wale down piles of shit upon their combined heads.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Stop

          @Ivan Frimmel 1

          "Anonymous are in no way affiliated with Wikileaks nor did they target Wikileaks."

          Yes we know that. Nobody is suggesting they did. You seem to have misread the comment.

          Wikileaks was attacked by so-called "patriot" activists, as was 4-chan. I look forward to seeing the authorities make some arrests.*

          *Warning : may contain traces of unlikelihood

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Apart from

      Lost business...

      And the Wikileaks DDOS was done from the US by all accounts...

    3. mt3ch

      Why the guy who did the WikiLeaks DoS wasn't tracked

      The guy who did the DDoS against Wikileaks claims to use his own scripts and appears to know how to anonymize his actions (http://th3j35t3r.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/time-to-speak-up-part-one/) so that probably explains why he wasn't tracked down; that and the fact that he is from the USA who do not care much for Wikileaks at the moment.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Hooch181

      Maybe because wikileaks don't keep logs of people accessing their site?

      Do we even know if wikileaks have made a complaint to any law enforcement agency about their DDOS?

    5. Hooch181
      FAIL

      To me...

      this devalues any effort by law enforcement to combat actual crime!

      When they go down this route it points out the hypocracy and curruption within our government and law enforcement (Or at least gives people an argument suggesting it).

      If you break the law, you break the law. It shouldn't matter what side you were doing it for!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        As others have said

        Bit pointless investigating the Wikileaks DDoS if Wikileaks don't keep logs! You'd certainly struggle to get a conviction, hell without logs where do you even start?

        Do 4Chan keep logs? Have they complained to the police? If not then that might be a big clue as to why we've not heard about an investigation

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    In my defence...

    I would claim that the Spencer Kelly, BBC Click resident idiot, deliberately and illegally infected my computer with a bot (over which I had no control)...

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/12/bbc_botnet_probe/

    And that Detective Superintendent Charlie McMurdie, of the Met's high-profile Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) is a liar...

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/19/pceu_tribunal/

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: a cynic writes...

    If these people had any sense at all they would have wiped all trace of LOIC from their machine when the first people were arrested in Holland, and then set their wireless security to WEP :)

    1. Hans 1

      WEP

      99.99% still use that, these days ... and I love it how these kids are called script kiddies ... all they did was install a piece of software and passed control other to some third party ...

      This is no different to blocking a factory!

      Anybody who thinks these kids should be arrested is an idiot ... no if's, but's or maybe's.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Erm.. Yeah it is

        Blocking a factory is an inconvenince, but it is legal (within certain constraints).

        Launching, participating in or aiding a DDoS is illegal. They broke the law and committed an arrestable offence, so yes they should be arrested.

        Whether it's right or wrong that it's an arrestable offence is the only thing up for debate, and LOIC aint gonna solve that one for you matey.

        If they'd (peacefully) picketed Mastercards HQ they'd be in the clear. The DDoS didn't get anything changed did it?

  13. Fuh Quit
    Thumb Up

    They're like suicide bombers

    The one running it all will, of course, not have been using LOIK (certainly not from his or her IP address anyway).

    The uprising has been quelled. That's good, right? Certainly as someone affected by their action as a collective, I'm happy this has happened. They're not cutting edge cyber criminals (still after them....) but it might well be something's been nipped (nicked?) in the bud.

    1. A handle is required
      Thumb Up

      @Fuh Quit

      Agreed, except that the point of Anonymous is that no one person is in control.

  14. Tron Silver badge

    Arresting kids for political protests?

    Didn't they do that in the late 30s in Germany?

    Peaceful digital e-protests and the law kicks down the door.

    Rather saddened that so many Reg posters feel the need to put the boot in on kids who give a damn taking on large corporates. When did you guys sell your souls to the dark side and start wearing jackboots? Looking forward to seeing the idealism terrorised from them are you?

    When you need the police, and you get a crime number, just remember that Mastercard didn't get a crime number. They got police raids at the taxpayers' expense.

    That's Mastercard, who charged around 25% interest all the way through the credit crunch.

    If this was 1939, whilst the tabloids were attacking Jewish asylum seekers as illegal immigrants, would you be supporting the arrest of kids trying to DDoS the German embassy with spam phone calls?

    Shame on you for so gleefully siding with governments trying to cover up their misdeeds and their friends in large corporations.

    1. david wilson

      @Tron

      A real political protest would be going to demonstrate outside company offices, organising a boycott, etc.

      What they actually did was

      a) illegal

      b) not likely to be noticeable without getting in the way of normal people doing legal things.

      c) unlikely to change the attacked companies' behaviour

      d) foolishly called an operation of vengeance

      e) quite likely to be counterproductive in publicity terms

      It's a fail simply on point a).

      They knew it was illegal and did it anyway, so getting done if they got caught was always a possibility.

      If they believed people who told them they'd be safe because no-one would bother tracking them down, (which seems to include various commentators on these forums) that's their problem.

      "It's not fair - I never thought I'd get caught" isn't a valid defence.

      As for point e), if I thought I had the moral high ground in a dispute with someone, having some self-styled supporters of mine ringing their doorbell every minute and running away wouldn't normally make me seem more in the right.

      Even if I had no control over the people and disapproved of what they did, unless I'd consistently not merely failed to support them, but had actively done anything I could from the very first to stop them and denounce them as morons, likely some of the blame would end up going in my direction.

      Even if I manage to avoid any blame, the actions could still end up creating some sympathy for the victim, and/or feelings of common purpose with them from anyone else who was inconvenienced.

      That might be unfair, but it's the way things are.

      1. Steve Roper
        Stop

        @david wilson

        Since when is being "illegal" a reason not to stand up for one's rights by itself? What happens when ANY form of protest becomes "illegal"? Would you support the police against protesters merely because protesting is "illegal"?

        Advocacy of blind obedience to the law is the hallmark of a zealot, a broken slave, or an idiot.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          @Steve

          Illegal protest should be the very last resource you use, when all else has failed, this DDOS appears to be both illegal and the first line of protest in this particular case. It's also a pretty good example of slacktivism - You know: "I'm slightly annoyed, but basically can't be arsed to get out of the house to protest, so I'll join a Facebook group", or in this case download a bit of software for someone else to use in a DDOS.

          We are not in a situation where protest is illegal, so it doesn't matter what we should do if protest was illegal, because it's not.

          re: "Advocacy of blind obedience to the law is the hallmark of a zealot, a broken slave, or an idiot."

          Calling names seems to be the first resort of someone who doesn't have a particularly coherent argument.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            To me it's all very clever

            Think about the genius of it all from the point of view of Anonymous (or someone within it anyway);

            If I use a Botnet to attack a site, I can be done.

            If the 'bots' are all volunteers, I'm shielded from part of the liability.

            Those that install the LOIC were nothing but cannon fodder, they served their purpose (by supplying bandwidth) and the fact they're getting shot to pieces (metaphorically) doesn't matter.

            It's brilliant!

        2. david wilson

          @Steve Roper

          >>"Advocacy of blind obedience to the law is the hallmark of a zealot, a broken slave, or an idiot."

          I didn't anywhere suggest that blind obedience to the law is a good thing, merely that people breaking the law should be prepared to accept the consequences, which is entirely different.

          There are times when I would consider breaking the law morally justifiable, but I'm not so dumb as to expect that everyone else would or should agree with me, or that the law would or should give me a free pass just because I thought I was right.

          In any case, assuming you read that far, I thought I'd explained some other reasons why I thought the actions in question were ill-advised.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Eh?

      Mastercard don't run accounts, they are a payment processor so they don't charge interest, that would be the banks.

      Anyway suggesting that arresting someone (child or not) for taking down or attempting to take down a legitimate lawful business is akin to fascism is grossly insulting.

      Just because it's a web site being prevented from working and not a physical bricks and mortar establishment, doesn't mean to say it will cost less in real money to the company taken down.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Civil disobedience vs. protest vs. anarchist good times

      Think there may be a difference between picketing in front of a bank with signs decrying their sins on the one hand, or chaining the doors shut so nobody can go in and do their business?

      Think there may be a difference between disobeying a law you believe is wrong in order to bring it to light and seek consensus from the rest of the populace (think Civil Rights events like the freedom riders, lunch counter sit-ins, and Rosa Parks) and wearing bandanas across your face while you light dumpsters on fire?

      Some differences in methodology there maybe?

    4. Oninoshiko
      Stop

      Arresting crimenals for crimes.

      "Didn't they do that in the late 30s in Germany?

      Peaceful digital e-protests and the law kicks down the door."

      This is not a political protest, this is a DDoS. A protest would be if they did a flash-mob in a public plaza. The difference is the objective. A protest is to raise support and public awareness of a problem. A DDoS has an objective of coersion. "Do what I say or I will harm your bussness."

      So if we are just going to let anything that remotely has a wiff of objection, lets just let assassins go, I mean that's just "political protest with extreme prejudice."

      *rolls eyes*

      "Rather saddened that so many Reg posters feel the need to put the boot in on kids who give a damn taking on large corporates. When did you guys sell your souls to the dark side and start wearing jackboots? Looking forward to seeing the idealism terrorised from them are you?"

      When did you develop the idea that "kids" should be able to threaten anyone they see fit, with no reprecussions. If by the age of 15 (the youngest arrested) you havent figured out that trying to coerse a financeal institution with threats is probibly illegal, and definitely immoral, there is probibly little hope for you.

      "When you need the police, and you get a crime number, just remember that Mastercard didn't get a crime number. They got police raids at the taxpayers' expense."

      Considering the time it's taken since the release and first use of LOIC, it looks to me like they *DID* get a crime number. If it was as you said, I would have expected arrests much sooner.

      "That's Mastercard, who charged around 25% interest all the way through the credit crunch."

      That's mastercard, who NOONE is required to barrow money from. If you have a problem with them, dont give them your custom, do a REAL protest, and get others to do the same. Don't try to coerce them with threats of attacking their web-site.

      "If this was 1939, whilst the tabloids were attacking Jewish asylum seekers as illegal immigrants, would you be supporting the arrest of kids trying to DDoS the German embassy with spam phone calls?

      Shame on you for so gleefully siding with governments trying to cover up their misdeeds and their friends in large corporations."

      No, Sir, shame on for trying to create a moral equivlency between Mastercard for charging an unresonable (but noone is required to do bussness with them) intrest rate and the Third Reich. Ofcourse, this coersion attempt has nothing to do with the intrest-rate that Mastercard charges, but is to get them to support wikileaks. The reality is, Mastercard hasnet censored anything, "Anonymous" has.

      Also, part of committing an act of civil disobediance is being prepaired to face the conciquances afterward. Gandi knew that, what is wrong with you that you don't?

    5. Scorchio!!

      Re: Arresting kids for political protests?

      "Didn't they do that in the late 30s in Germany?"

      There is /absolutely/ no comparison. I can only thank dog that you didn't invoke Godwin.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Unamed Persons Suspected...

    ...of being anonymous

  16. Ivan Frimmel 1
    FAIL

    Arresting kids for political protests? #

    " Rather saddened that so many Reg posters feel the need to put the boot in on kids who give a damn taking on large corporates. When did you guys sell your souls to the dark side and start wearing jackboots? Looking forward to seeing the idealism terrorised from them are you?"

    What you don't realize is that a lot of us could have done it too.. protest for protest sake is stupid and irresponsible. ESPECIALLY if it is ILLEGAL. ESPECIALLY if they are going to take you to jail and make an example out of you - while taking away OUR rights.

    Notice there has been ALOT of new talk about net neutrality ... kiss you internet privacy goodbye. You can thank these idiots.

    1. Adrian 4
      Thumb Down

      @ivan

      Or, for a less unbalanced view ..

      http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/27/anonymous-internet

  17. Wang N Staines
    Black Helicopters

    Welcome to Britain

    1. The student protest

    2. The DDOS protest

    Don't you love democracy?

  18. Scorchio!!

    Re: Arresting kids for political protests? #

    "Notice there has been ALOT of new talk about net neutrality ... kiss you internet privacy goodbye. You can thank these idiots."

    When I remarked on this point a month or so back some juvenile emitted a 'yeah right' response on 21.12.10. This sort of stupidity damages the rights and freedoms of others. Abuse it and the response is almost invariably OTT and destructive.

    1. david wilson

      @Scorchio!!

      >>"This sort of stupidity damages the rights and freedoms of others. Abuse it and the response is almost invariably OTT and destructive."

      Though also no doubt comforting to the people involved who want to see The System as Evil.

      Even if it makes as much sense as poking a horse with a stick because you think it's bad tempered, and then using the resulting kick you get as proof that you were right all along.

  19. irish donkey
    Stop

    If they took part...

    I'm sure they had some other stuff on their PC's which they shouldn't of had. A few torrents maybe....

    plod may do them for that as well.

    shame

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So, round two...

    LOIC with a proxy or TOR or some other similar obfuscation routine.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Simple question

    Why can't the police just ask Anonymous to conduct an internal investigation, maybe give them a talking to, extract some assurances, that sort of thing?

    Or does that work only with newspapers, banks and telecoms companies?

  22. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    The version of LOIC I looked at..

    (was on a firewalled virtual machine). Although you could set targets yourself, it had the 'option' to hook into IRC channels and be controlled / co-orrdinated remotely. This was flagged as the 'cool' option.

    However even when one had not selected the subscribe to IRC option, the software was trying to (intermittently) exchange packets with IP addresses in Brazil.

    LOIC was very bad news for whoever ran it in anger or ignorance.

    But what the heck - plod will find 'extreme pr0n' on all their PCs anyway. They have a minimum of two years inside apiece branded as nonces and (if they survive) a lifetime on the sex offenders register. DDOS charges are the least of their worries. Injustice shall be served.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Just wondering...

    Why hasn't someone come up with an easy-to-use LOIC that DOES have built-in features to keep the user anonymous?

    1. Cucumber C Face

      re: Just wondering...

      >...easy-to-use LOIC that DOES have built-in features to keep the user anonymous?<

      The two obvious methods would be IP spoofing or attacking via anonymising proxies. Neither would be effective...

      1. spoofed IP headers are going nowhere from most 'consumer' machines on the interwebs

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address_spoofing

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_filtering

      2. anonymising proxy services will either fail to transmit the attack on (e.g. most drop UDP), rat on the attacker (see terms and conditions of all commercial services) and/or slow the attack down so much it becomes inneffective. Also funnelling an attack through (a few) proxies de-distributes it making it easier to block at the receiving end.

  24. Hans 1
    Grenade

    protest

    A protest, is when many people block something together - they are using their right to protest. When one guy launches a DDOS attack and asks for money, it is a different matter entirely ...

    These kids were protesting against financial institutions, that tried vainly to stop a website from divulging information (at the order of governments who try to hide their lies, their corruption, their immoral activities) - in vain, as wikileaks are mirrored across the globe.

    We are old farts with no balls, we lost our sense of revolt ... we let governments rip us off, use our money for their own interests, we have sold our soul to financial institutions for a new telly we cannot afford without a loan, or a fancy car, house ... name it.

    The rich and powerful become richer at our expense, if you earn more than 10k a month, lucky you - you are probably right to side with the wealthy and powerful, if you earn less and side with governments, you are a masochist and deserve all you get.

    Over the last ten years, the debt has surged, but the total wealth of countries has surged as well (2 to 4 times as quickly as the debt) ... now, 1% of the richest people of every country got ~50% of the country's increased wealth ... around 75% of the population got close to nothing ... and who has to pay for the debt? The 75% of course ...

    ~27 000 children of 7 years old or less die every fucking DAY of starvation or malnutrition-related illnesses ... and governments across the globe try hard to keep the status quo - because it means even more money to the rich and/or powerful. It is in the wikileaks documents as well ... who would want that to get known? That our governments are trying to exploit Africa to the bone ... and I am not saying US and Europe only, Australia, NZ ... you name it. UNESCO? They are helping with it as well ... it is the old adage, give me a fish, feed me for the day, teach me how to fish, feed me for life ... Dumping food in Africa only puts the local peasants out of work. European chicken is sold on the market in Bamako, half price compared to local produce ... how can a European farmer produce chicken at half price compared to an African? He cannot! We subsidize it. European ships are fishing across the African coast, because we claim they do not have the infrastructure to do it. Imagine for a second, we would finance infrastructure for them to do fishing ... not only would we get cheap fish ... but they could buy our services, our cars etc ... new markets. But we are governed by idiotic, selfish, ignorant, and corrupt gentlemen [no cursing, i am trying hard].

    Western oil companies are happy to keep Nigeria in the state it is in, cheap oil ... just have to pay a few million to the top brass ...

    People, I dunno, get your heads out of your backsides for a minute and open your eyes! Again, history shows, it's the kids that lead the way ... like in the 60's ... It's yesterday once more, shalalala-la!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Have you ever been on a protest?

      Perhaps you've never been on a protest/strike before but there are certain constraints you have to conform to to remain legal.

      You can ask people to join you instead of entering the building, but you _CANNNOT_ prevent them from entering. You also can't harrass them.

      Someone posted earlier a good analogy,

      You CAN picket the outside of a building

      You CANT chain the door shut to prevent people entering.

      The DDoS is essentially the second, if they'd used DNS poisoning to re-direct users to a different page, and then said do you want to continue, it'd be closer to a real protest (albeit the DNS poisoning would probably be illegal still).

      So calling this a protest is complete and utter bollocks, it's an act of cyber vandalism aided by kids who call themselves hackers yet lack the sense to ensure that their IP won't end up in someones logs.

      There is plenty of corruption around the world, not gonna argue there. But ask yourself this, what did the DDoS acheive that a _real_ protest wouldn't have? Apart from the risk of a criminal record of course.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    assumption

    the assumption that illegal is equivalent to wrong seems to be at play here a lot.

    i'd hope that most people's consciences find plenty of legal things are wrong, and a few illegal things are not.

    yet "it's illegal" seems to be presented here as a knock down argument.

    don't use the existence of the rule of law within a democracy as an excuse to let your moral muscles atrophy, it's not perfect a perfect system, only the least bad one.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      No Title Required Today!

      I've been taking the talk of illegal to mean that if you do something illegal you can't then complain when you get arrested for it.

      Whether you agree with the attacks or not, no-one should be surprised that people have had their collar felt. DDoS is illegal, and for good reason, so the arrests were kind of expected.

      I'd suggest most commenters take issue more with the way the 'protest' was staged than whether it was legal or not. If DDoS were legal, do you really think many here would be changing their tune?

      I, for one, wouldn't. DDoS is a stupid ineffective way of protest. Aint acheived a lot really has it? Perhaps taught a few an important lesson on the software they run.

      It'd be interesting to see a Poll to see how many, if any Reg readers installed the LOIC (even just to look at it.) I nearly did, and then thought better of it.

    2. david wilson

      @AC

      >>"yet "it's illegal" seems to be presented here as a knock down argument."

      It pretty much /is/ a knock-down argument against people saying those involved shouldn't have been arrested.

      I'm not sure how many people involved in proper Real Life Protests would say that they shouldn't even be arrested if they break the law in the course of protests.

      If they have a great moral defence of their actions, I'm sure they'll have the chance to present it at some point in the future, and see how many people agree with them.

  26. Tom 38
    Headmaster

    @Bearded lefties (Hans 1, mainly)

    @Hans,

    this is a discussion about script kiddies who thought that co-opting their computers and net connections to take part in a criminal DDoS. It's not a discussion about how first world companies and third world governments collude to strip assets from the third world country. Yes, that is distasteful; no, its got fuck all to do with script kiddies getting their collar felt for being naughty script kiddies.

    @Tron

    Mastercard don't charge people interest. No-one has a 'Mastercard' account; they are a payment processing service, and make their money by charging the banks who offer their cards.

    If the account that you had Mastercard was charging 25% interest, then that means you probably have an exceptionally poor credit rating - my bank issued Mastercard has never been that high.

    Honestly, the way the Grauniad readers on here are talking, you would think this actually was 30s Germany - this is Britain, we have extensive and vigorous right to protest laws. People these days think it is fine on a protest to vandalize buildings, cars, anything they can lay their hands on. The most powerful form of protest is massive numbers of people, peacefully making their point.

    Crowds of yobs daubing paint on cars, buildings, statues just make me think they don't actually want to protest, they just want some anarchy.

    1. david wilson

      @Tom 38

      >>"Honestly, the way the Grauniad readers on here are talking..."

      I'm not too sure how many Guardian readers would actually support the Anonymous protests, nor how many UK-based Anonymous types would read the Guardian even if there was a graphic novel version.

      Last time I looked, that paper wasn't exactly best friends with Saint Julian.

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