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Scotland Yard is investigating Anonymous
INSPECTOR KNACKER of Scotland Yard is investigating the online hacktivist group Anonymous for conducting distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
Anonymous has taken credit for a number of high profile DDoS attacks on corporate and government websites all over the world. Recently the group turned its attention to firms that withdrew services from Wikileaks including Amazon, Visa, Mastercard and Paypal.
The Metropolitan Police revealed it has been tracking the activities of Anonymous for months, saying it received allegations that the group was engaging in DDoS attacks and an investigation is ongoing.
While Wikileaks founder Julian Assange urged supporters to defend his website against what he termed "instruments of US foreign policy", Assange was careful not to condone the attacks, since DDoS attacks are illegal in the UK.
The nuisance value of Anonymous comes from the number and physical distribution of its members. The loosely affiliated collective supposedly consists of thousands of individuals, yet only three confirmed arrests have been made relating to DDoS attacks carried out by the group.
Now that Scotland Yard has revealed it is looking into Anonymous, one has to assume that its network administrators are ready for anything. After all, it would be quite an embarrassment for the coppers if they were unable to protect their own Internet resources. µ
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There's much money to be made and power to be wielded that control of the net is coming.
Already there is talk in UK of "request for porn access" as a requirement so that "children do not have access to porn" by accident. That will be used as the firewall excuse for controlling web access.
Australia is leading the way ;-)
Given the fact that fighting a worldwide distributed army of vigilantes is impossible, I think they should save their time and Money. But, I have a few framing questions that the investigators could ask themselves in stopping Anonymous.
1. How can you change TCP/IP standards which the Internet runs on and are being exploited by these activists to voice their concerns.
2. How can you control the Internet.
3. How can you fight the wind?
Answer to all: You can't
Craig
Given the general level of competence demonstrated by police.uk in large investigations - let alone their record in specifically IT-related matters - I am not at all hopeful.
Although I understand that this "anon" used to write a lot of poetry. Perhaps they could start looking there?
Given that it takes the highly trained experts of the Met something like four months to examine a hard-drive for dubious content (and Operation Ore lasted, what .. six years? ... and produced about, what ... three safe convictions?) I would doubt this news is causing anyone any sleepless nights.
The War Against Online Naughtiness will founder on the same rocks as the War Against Drugs.