Anonymous, LulzSec Respond To FBI Arrests Of Suspected Hackers

Hacker groups Anonymous and LulzSec have issued a joint statement in response to recent FBI arrests of suspected Anonymous members thought to have carried out a cyberattack against PayPal in 2010.

In their release, the hackers addressed a statement made to NPR by Steven Chabinsky, deputy assistant FBI director. "We want to send a message that chaos on the Internet is unacceptable," Chabinsky told NPR. "[Even if] hackers can be believed to have social causes, it's entirely unacceptable to break into websites and commit unlawful acts."

The hacker collectives responded with a list of what they define as "unacceptable" practices:

* Governments lying to their citizens and inducing fear and terror to keep them in control by dismantling their freedom piece by piece.

* Corporations aiding and conspiring with said governments while taking advantage at the same time by collecting billions of funds for federal contracts we all know they can't fulfil.

* Lobby conglomerates who only follow their agenda to push the profits higher, while at the same time being deeply involved in governments around the world with the only goal to infiltrate and corrupt them enough so the status quo will never change.

With regards to the arrests of alleged members of Anonymous by the FBI, the hackers wrote, "Your threats to arrest us are meaningless to us as you cannot arrest an idea. [...] [T]here is nothing - absolutely nothing - you can possibly to do make us stop."

According to the AP, the FBI on Tuesday arrested 14 people across the United States and confiscated computers in connection with the PayPal attack. Another two were arrested for unrelated activities. In addition, Britain's Scotland Yard took into custody one person, and the Dutch National Police Agency arrested four.

Seemingly undeterred, Anonymous on Thursday claimed to have bypassed NATO's online security and swiped "restricted" files. According to a tweet from @AnonymousIRC, "We are sitting on about one Gigabyte of data from NATO now, most of which we cannot publish as it would be irresponsible. But Oh NATO...."

Assistant New York University professor Gabriella Coleman, who has been studying the Anonymous hackers, recently told The Huffington Post that these arrests would not stop the hacktivists' efforts. "Some people surely will get scared off," said Coleman. "Others will feel more emboldened to fight the fight [...] But I don't think at the moment it's going to slow things down."

More Than a Dozen Suspected 'Anonymous' Hackers Arrested in Nationwide Sweep

More Than a Dozen Suspected 'Anonymous' Hackers Arrested in Nationwide Sweep

More than a dozen suspected members of "Anonymous" were arrested this morning in states including Florida, New Jersey and California, in what appears to be a nationwide takedown of the notorious hacking group, FoxNews.com has exclusively learned.

The arrests are part of an ongoing investigation into Anonymous, which has claimed responsibility for numerous cyberattacks against a variety of websites including Visa and MasterCard.

July 19, 2011: FBI agents execute a search warrant at the Long Island, NY, home of a suspected member of notorious hacking group Anonymous.

Some of the arrests were out of the San Francisco field office, sources said, activity that followed searches earlier in the day in the New York area at residences believed to be associated with members of the hacking collective, FoxNews.com has learned.

“I can confirm that we’re conducting law enforcement actions relating to a criminal investigation,” said Alicia Sensibaugh, a spokeswoman for FBI’s San Francisco office, out of which sources said multiple search warrants were executed Tuesday morning.

Sources said the California searches, which were carried out at 6 a.m. PDT, are connected to allegations that a national network of hackers carried out distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against numerous companies and their websites.

Earlier in the day, the FBI executed search warrants at the New York homes -- two in Long Island, N.Y., and one in Brooklyn, N.Y. -- of three suspected members of Anonymous, FoxNews.com reported.

More than 10 FBI agents arrived at the Baldwin, N.Y., home of Giordani Jordan with a search warrant for computers and computer-related accessories, removing at least one laptop from the premises.

 The Anonymous group is a loose collection of cybersavvy activists inspired by WikiLeaks and its flamboyant head Julian Assange to fight for "Internet freedom" -- along the way defacing websites, shutting down servers, and scrawling messages across screens web-wide.

The Anonymous vigilante group recently turned its efforts to the Arizona police department, posting personal information of law officers and hacking and defacing websites in response, the group claims, to the state's controversial SB1070 immigration law.

While Anonymous is largely a politically motivated organization, splinter group LulzSec -- which dominated headlines in the spring for a similar streak of cyberattacks -- was largely in it for the thrills.

The metropolitan police in London arrested the first alleged member of the LulzSec group on June 20, a 19-year-old teen named Ryan Cleary. Subsequent sweeps through Italy and Switzerland in early July led to the arrests of 15 more people -- all between the ages of 15 and 28 years old.

The two groups are responsible for a broad spate of digital break-ins targeting governments and large corporations, including Japanese technology giant Sony, the U.S. Senate, telecommunications giant AT&T, Fox.com, and other government and private entities.

LulzSec Admirers Claim Attack On DISA

Taking its cue from LulzSec and Anonymous, hacker group strikes U.S. military agency network as protest against U.S. involvement in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq.

By Elizabeth Montalbano InformationWeek
July 18, 2011 01:45 PM

A group apparently taking a page out of the LulzSec playbook claims to have broken into the network of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and stolen sensitive information it plans to post online.

The Crazies--which like Anonymous, AntiSec, and the now-defunct LulzSec hacking groups--said it is politically motivated to act against the federal government. It posted online SSL certificate revocation lists (CRLs) it claims are in its possession as a result of an intrusion into DISA's network.

"We're fully supporting you and supporting any others who wants to get those carnivores that lives on sucking the civilians' blood as far as we saw that happening in Libya ... and before that in Iraq and Afghanistan and many others," according to the notes. "We'll expose them because we had enough of their thoughts and calls for fake freedom."

On the document-sharing site Pastebin, the group also voiced its support for those hacktivist groups in notes about its activity, which it said was inspired by U.S. military engagement in the Middle East.

Crazies didn't go into detail about what's contained in the files it claims to have lifted from DISA's network, but said it will post them online in less than a week.

Reached via telephone, Lily Cofield from the DISA public affairs office said the agency is currently checking with the Department of Defense's U.S. Cyber Command, which keeps track of intrusions into .gov websites, to see if the group's claim is legitimate. Until then, DISA can't confirm it's been hacked, she said.

Crazies could be aspiring to be the next big politically motivated hacktivist outfit. Until it announced it was ceasing operations near the end of June, LulzSec went on a 50-day hacking spree, targets of which included the Navy, the Arizona Department of Public Safety, and the CIA.

Following LulzSec's self-enforced demise, AntiSec--which includes members of Anonymous and LulzSec--picked up where the latter left off in an international hacking spree as part of an "Operation Anti Security" campaign targeting government corruption around the world.