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INTERPOL’S WEBSITE APPEARS to have been the target of a cyber attack following the arrests of 25 members of the hacking activist group Anonymous.
The international police agency said that 25 suspected members of the movement were arrested in a sweep across Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain – carried out by local police under the aegis of Interpol’s Latin American Working Group of Experts on Information Technology Crime. Those arrested are aged between 17 and 40.
Those arrested are suspected of planning cyber-attacks against several institutions including Colombia’s defence ministry and presidential websites, and Chile’s Endesa electricity company and national library, reports the Telegraph.
Following news of the arrests, Interpol’s website went down for a short period of time on Tuesday, according to the Guardian.
Interpol said the arrests had been made as part of ‘Operation Unmask’, which was launched in mid-February in response to a series of cyber-attacks originating in the four countries targeted. About 250 pieces of IT equipment and mobile phones were seized during the operation.
“This operation shows that crime in the virtual world does have real consequences for those involved, and that the internet cannot be seen as a safe haven for criminal activity, no matter where it originates or where it is targeted,” said Interpol’s acting executive director of police services Bernd Rossbach.
Anonymous Analytics described the movement as a “decentralised network of individuals focused on promoting access to information, free speech, and transparency.”
The group, which launches fairly regular cyber-attacks against targets it considers corrupt, says it has moved the issue of transparency from the political level to the corporate level in order to “expose companies that practice poor corporate governance and are involved in large-scale fraudulent activities.”
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well , i hate to say it but how big would our collective blinkers be if it wasn’t for anon?
I love how easily people seem to blindly accept these faceless “organisations” as the saviours of “free speech”
How exactly does anonymous brand of censorship differ to SOPA censorship.
Ever Wonder who is really behind Anon & Wikileaks ?
Trust no one
an apt name
Don’t talk about what you don’t know.
In response to an “apparent” cyber attack on interpol they arrested 25 people they suspected… …of using computers? of having an IT degree? of saying something out of line on the journal.ie forums? Its all so paper thin it could be a plot line from CSI! And yet interpols exec direc thinks it was a successful crack down on cyber crime. What a nice little work of fiction we are being force fed.
“i fought the law and the law won!” Bobby Fuller
nothing but respect for anonymous, at the very least they have an excellent sense of humour. they will never be stopped
I thought these guys all used IP address blockers, etc. How good are they if they get caught so easily?
Who said it was easy? They are known to use zombie machines etc but the folks chasing them can be just as good, and obviously are.
Or how good are they that the managed to hack INTERPOL.
Comitting crime is easy. Evading capture is the hard part.
I’m not an IT head, but from all I’ve read hacking is as easy as picking a car lock…something I also have no skill or training in.
@Jason I doubt they hacked anyone, I’m assuming it was another DDoS attack like all the others.
These ‘cyber-attackers’ are just fools running LOIC pointed at an IP address. Hardly hackers.
Script Kids? Yeah, they make up most of Anonymous.
Which is a shame really, considering that they don’t quite understand what they are getting themselves into.
LulzSec & Anon and many other groups have dozens of guides on how to ghost yourself online. If the kids don’t want to read, who cares? I certainly don’t.
Ghosting isn’t entirely foolproof, though. Even though there are networking programs that completely exclude your mahcine from the WWW.
have your say