Not anonymous enough
Police in Spain have announced the arrest of three persons in connection with the recent hacking of Sony's PlayStaton Network, as well as attacks against numerous corporate and government websites around the world.
According to a National Police statement the three arrestees were local leaders of the Spanish arm of the group Anonymous. The three, say the police, were tracked down after review of Anonymous websites, and over two million lines of chat logs, which identified them as having " the capacity to make decisions and direct attacks."
According to the police, a server in the houses of one of the three arrested was used in attacks against many of the targets of Anonymous' recent attacks. The nature of the attacks, according to the police statement, was the use of a program called LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Canon) - a tool that enables users to carry out denial of service attacks against targets. Whether the server ceased had carried out any more sophisticated an attack than simply running this program the Spanish police failed to say.
The police also state that software specifically designed for the creation of malware was discovered on one of the arrestee's computers. Furthermore, two of the three apparently didn't even have Internet connections of their own, instead piggybacking off of others' connections, in an attempt to hide their activities.
The Anonymous leaders will be charged with criminal damage, discovery and disclosure of secrets and conspiracy. The arrests certainly won't put a stop to the activities of Anonymous (by its nature an all but impossible task), but with the a growing number of arrests of persons alleged to be part of the group, it's possible that would-be participants might reconsider involvement in future Anonymous attacks.
