FBI Arrests 14 Hackers, But Anonymous Still Sailing & ‘Seeking Shiny Booty’

Technology, we love it; some of us can’t live without it. But when it’s used against us, we tend to hate it. One hacking crew was so fed up with “constant monitoring” that it injected 42 trojans into a German police GPS tracking system. LulzSec was resurrected to attack Murdoch; but a day later a huge FBI sweep in the U.S. has so far resulted in 14 people being arrested for allegedly being connected to Anonymous.

The series of raids today are part of an ongoing FBI investigation into the hacking collective Anonymous. This morning, more than 10 FBI agents raided the Long Island home of Giordani Jordan and spent nearly two hours there. FoxNews first reported that the FBI searched two additional homes of suspected Anonymous members in Long Island and Brooklyn. The feds were nowhere close to done as Fox reported later that, “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.”

Government officials “described the sweep as a major law enforcement operation and say there have been 14 arrests nationwide,” according to CBS News. “Agents seized computers and computer accessories under search warrants at four homes of suspected hackers in Baldwin and Merrick both on Long island, in Brooklyn and the Bronx.”

This is not the first time the FBI cast a wide net in hopes of catching members of Anonymous. CNET noted that the feds previously executed over 40 search warrants after Anonymous had launched DDoS attacks in support of WikiLeaks. But the hacking group Anonymous is a collective of people with voices and attacking power from all over the globe. While there were previous arrests in other countries, it seems as if another branch of Anonymous and more members quickly fill the void as members of the hacking collective are taken out.

One hacker was arrested allegedly as a part of a hacking group dubbed the “No Name Crew” which claimed responsibility for publishing sensitive data about German customs authorities and the Patras GPS location system as well as investigators’ emails. H-Security reported, the No Name Crew said they had “full control of the central download server of the German Federal Police for some time” and were able to “inject at least 42 trojans” into the system. They also claim to have been intercepting the network traffic between systems belonging to the German Federal Police, the German Federal Criminal Police and the German Customs Authority for an entire year. The group published 717 MB of encrypted data and claimed the password would be automatically published should any of the hacking group be arrested. German police told Focus Online magazine that three more identities are known of the suspected hackers. According to the magazine which claims to have seen classified documents, the police cut corners by using cheap software to protect servers and the attackers easily exploited those mistakes.

The Hacker News reported on The Crazies, another hacking group, which claimed to have stolen and leaked certificate revocation lists from the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). Meanwhile, yet more members of Anonymous are busy engaging other causes such as Operation Indiana after the Indiana Supreme Court kicked the Fourth Amendment in Barnes vs. Indiana. “The court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.” Some from Anonymous are not happy after the “no right to reasonably resist unlawful entry by police officers” ruling in regards to privacy in our homes.

It’s big news that the FBI is raiding and arresting suspected members of Anonymous, but numbers involved in the decentralized collective are huge and global. It remains to be seen if the arrests will scare enough members to stop the hacking attacks.

@AnonymousIRC seems unfazed and tweeted:

Despite all the haters, Anonymous and the AntiSec movement keeps going. In other words, all these groups seem to have had it with surveillance and what they perceive as injustice, as if they are saying “we’re not gonna take it anymore.” The FBI may be saying the same thing as the battle heats up.

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