Either...
...these are the extremely low hanging fruit - the puppets at the end of the strings - or these people take absolutely no precautions with regards their own security whilst preaching to others.
Federal officials arrested 16 people accused of carrying out computer crimes that damaged or breached protected systems, including a December attack organized by the Anonymous hacker collective on PayPal that caused numerous service disruptions. Fourteen suspects from 10 states were accused of participating in “Operation Avenge …
DDoS is an offence! It is illegal! Should you participate in this you may find that the local police will take you away, and lock you up possibly for a very long period of time. Worst of all in the US you may find yourself incarcerated with a man called Bubba …….
Aside from being illegal, it is not either particularly big, or clever. A trained chimp could probably carry out a DDoS attack on a web site.
It appears "Anonymous" is not really all *that* "anonymous".
I don't know about anyone else, but I was surprised to see that the arrested participants were adults (from a legal point of view, anyway.)
It will be interesting to see how many will offer to roll on their comrades, and if they have even have anything of value to tell.
Anthrophobic, Toxic, etc.
If they use an alias, they are not Anons.
They are wannabes who ran L.O.I.C. from home like idiots, instead of using a botnet or public wifi hotspot. I'm shocked the feds weren't sent to round up more. Do you think it only took this many people to DDoS MC & Visa? It is obvious they (fbi) are just trying to make an example to discourage this kind of activity. Fools should be discouraged from doing things they have no skill in.
...but they are really just immature children playing games.
I mean just look at the "aliases" that they use!
These people have no loyalty to each other, no real agenda other than wanting to be part of an accepting group. Most of them are probably just teenagers with some chip on their shoulders like most teenagers have.
The article seems to imply they were traced by their use of LOIC. Probably at home on their own computer. It looks a lot like they then had a trace set up on their line (As the press release gives handles as well as real namesl)
Sadly, i suspect they actually believed all the ignorant press that they were anonymous and untouchable.
I suspect the real hackers in Anonymous wont be caught in such a manner, as it seems likely *they* know what they are doing.
These arrests are nothing more than a warning.
So they have arrested 16 people who may or may not be members of anonymous.
This is not news, when they CONVICT someone of being a member of anonymous and engaging in illegal acts then we can start harping on about "It appears "Anonymous" is not really all *that* "anonymous".
Innocent until proven guilty people; not innocent until arrested.
But yes, at least a little presumption of innocence would be good. It's not like these individuals (the people arrested, not the nameless faces on the far end of a computer that they are accused of being) are people we have long histories about, either - so we really are just taking the FBI at their word right now, something I'm not that comfortable doing. Of course, even should they be convicted, there is a bit of a difference between running LOIC on a single Anon "raid" than being anything more than an edge, bit player. It's yet to be seen if the FBI even managed to catch one person worth doing anything more than just using as an example (not that they will hesitate at that, naturally).
-d
You know, there seems always to be some ignoramus who likes to say "Innocent until proven guilty" while not even knowing that the principle only applies to juries: a *jury* is not allowed to start with a presumption of guilt, or to presume that arrest implies guilt.
Secondly, a person is *guilty* of a crime, or any action, if the DID the action. Whether they will be found guilty in a court of law, and what that means, is a different matter entirely. (Maybe you can find someone to explain to you, in suitably simple terms, the concept of "criminal responsibility": you might learn that a person can be found both to have committed an action, and yet be "not guilty" of it cf. M'Naghten Rules, various concepts relating to diminished capacity, etc etc etc.)
But, at any rate, since *I* am not serving on a jury, and since *I* have "freedom of speech" guaranteed to me by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, *I* can, therefore, presume *anything* I damn well please, and say so whenever I damn well please, paying no mind to an ignoramus with a platitude.
Aside from the scary notions of justice you have you missed the point.
The FBI claim they have arrested 16 members of Anonymous.
For all we know hoovered 16 homeless people off the street and claimed they are members of anonymous.
Not until a conviction has been made can we say with any certainty that "Yes, these people were members of anonymous", until then they are SUSPECTS (As in suspected, not sure, cannot be 100% certain) and even then, as has been mentioned elsewhere these were probably idiots running LOIC rather than the serious hackers.
"For all we know hoovered 16 homeless people off the street and claimed they are members of anonymous."
You, along with some other people here, might not know this, but in order to obtain an arrest warrant, the FBI or any other law enforcement agency must to apply to a judge for one, and show "probable cause". An "arrest warrant" is based, therefore, on an assumption of guilt.
As for my "scary notions of justice", that's as may be, but it *is* in accordance with the way the law operates.
"An "arrest warrant" is based, therefore, on an assumption of guilt."
No, an arrest warrant is based on "sufficient evidence" presented to a judge that the prosecution can make some kind of a case against the subject of the warrant, NOT an assumption of guilt. "Sufficient evidence" is in quotes, because what constitutes sufficiency is purely in the eyes of the judge. (In some places, this sufficient evidence is not even needed; a wink and a nod from the prosecutor's office at the right jurist is all that is necessary).
Gee it came out of San Jose; where is paypal located?
I love how it says the machines were hit with more traffic than they were setup to handle.
What about the whole utube scandal. I don't recall universal tube and rubber having any FBI raids done. In those events universal tube and rubbers servers were overloaded with more traffic than they were configured to handle. Looking back on that ordeal one would have to assume that was staged by youtube to get the domain or at least bring attention to youtube.
Why were no ISPS indicted in this? Didn't the the ISPS provide the platform for this all to happen? Didn't the ISPs work with the FBI to identify these people?
Comcast, Verizon, and others are admitting they know what people are doing with their internet connections. So if they all know what people are doing why aren't they being held accountable. Is the FBI going to raid comcast, verizon, and other executives homes?
The FBI, ATF, DOJ, etc.. are running guns to Mexico that are killing US cops. The boarders are wide open.
ICE is shutting down domain names.
I will sleep better at night knowing the FBI is raiding the homes of college students.
It seems that you've been living two lives.
In one life, you're Joshua J. Covelli, program writer for a respectable software company. You have a social security number, pay your taxes, and you... help your landlady carry out her garbage.
The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias "Toxic" and are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for. One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not.
(hey, el reg - we need an Agent Smith icon)
...should have stuck with the good fight IMHO (going after dangerous cults, exposing animal abusers etc). Standing up for Assange (or McKinnon or...) could have been done with similar japes that cause disruption, but break no laws.
Heck, I will even support their cracking to an extent (under the premise of committing a small crime to prevent a greater one - generally legal, at least in the UK/Eire) but DDoS? Really?
We do need people to stand-up against the increasing number of corporate and government abuses of process; for a time I thought Anonymous was one such group. However it seems that some sections of it have begun to lose their way.
"Scott Matthew Arciszewski, a 21-year-old student at the University of Central Florida, illegally accessed a website operated by the FBI-affiliated Infragard, a criminal complaint filed last week in Tampa alleged. He then uploaded three files he named “aspydrv.asp;jpg” – and, yes, the indictment includes that semicolon in the filename – which “caused damage to the server by impairing the integrity of the server,”
The site was not accessed illegally AND THEN files uploaded. The site used flawed software that allowed file uploading which blocks ASP files being uploaded and is got around by appending the jpg prefix at the end. The ASP file uploaded was an ASP shell that gave them the access to everything else.
The integrity of the server was already impaired from the hole in the software the site admin installed.
The fact the website had a flaw it its security does not mean what he did was legal.
If you leave your keys in your car, with the engine running, it still is illegal for me to drive off with it.
But then you knew that and you're just looking for something to justify his actions, aren't you?
This is all about who you sympathize with, not the legality of the actions taken.
1) The UK does not take white-collar crime seriously (look at the pathetic sentences hand out to those who commit money laundering, fraud or make false expense claims)
2) These 16 were not rich and well connected.
There is one set of laws for us and another set for our betters. It's time we learnt our place.