{"id":75789,"date":"2013-10-03T23:38:58","date_gmt":"2013-10-03T22:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/anonymous-busted-13-hacktivists-indicted-over-operation-payback\/75789\/"},"modified":"2013-10-04T00:02:45","modified_gmt":"2013-10-03T23:02:45","slug":"anonymous-busted-13-hacktivists-indicted-over-operation-payback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/anonymous-busted-13-hacktivists-indicted-over-operation-payback\/","title":{"rendered":"Anonymous busted: 13 hacktivists indicted over Operation Payback"},"content":{"rendered":"
A federal grand jury has returned an indictment against 13 alleged members of the hacktivist movement Anonymous and has charged them with participating in an anti-copyright campaign that targeted government and corporation websites in 2010 and 2011.<\/div>\n

The 28-page indictment, unsealed on Thursday, accuses the
\ndefendants of engaging in Operation Payback, an Anonymous-led
\ninitiative that went after the US Copyright Office, major credit
\ncard companies and international law firms and trade groups
\nstarting in late 2010. The movement was in response to attempts
\nfrom those entities to keep otherwise protected materials from
\nbeing freely circulated on the Internet.<\/p>\n

According to the indictment, Operation Payback targeted victims
\nwhich Anonymous claimed \u201copposed its stated philosophy of
\nmaking all information free for all, including information
\nprotected by copyright laws or national security
\nconsiderations<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indictment, courtesy of Gregg
\nHoush<\/a><\/p>\n

The wave of attacks – an orchestrated effort to temporarily take
\nwebsites offline by overloading them with illegitimate traffic –
\nwas launched shortly after the notorious file-sharing site The
\nPirate Bay was taken down in 2010.<\/p>\n

Targets included the Recording Industry Association of America
\n(RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the US
\nCopyright Office of the Library of Congress, Visa, MasterCard and
\nBank of America, as well as entities outside of the United
\nStates, such as British intellectual property rights protection
\nfirm Davenport Lyons and the British Phonographic Institute
\n(BPI), a UK trade group that served as the across-the-pond
\nequivalent of the MPAA.<\/p>\n

Federal prosecutors say that Anonymous launched a series of
\ncoordinated distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attacks
\nagainst targets using custom software called the Low Orbit Ion
\nCannon, or LOIC, that flooded web servers with traffic and
\nrendered sites unavailable for legitimate users.<\/p>\n

The defendants are all charged with conspiracy to intentionally
\ncause damage to protected computers, and range in age from 21 to
\n65, according to Reuters reporter David Ingram.<\/p>\n

At least one of the defendants, Dennis Owen Collins, has
\npreviously ended up in the sights of federal investigators.
\nCollins and 13 others were indicted in 2011 for a similar wave of
\nDDoS attacks that targeted PayPal in response to the company’s
\nrefusal to process donations to the anti-secrecy website
\nWikiLeaks. That group, the so-called \u201cPayPal 14,\u201d is expected to
\nappear in federal court in California later this month.<\/p>\n

Other defendants in the Operation Payback case include Jeremy
\nLeroy Heller, Zhiwei Chen, Joshua S. Phy, Ryan Russell Gubele,
\nRobert Audubon Whitfield, Anthony Tadros, Geoffrey Kenneth
\nCommander, Phillip Garrett Simpson, Austen l. Stamm, Timothy
\nRobert McClain, Wade Carl Williams and Thomas J. Bell.<\/p>\n

The 13 suspects, the indictment claims, participated in and
\ncoordinated the DDoS cyber attacks by deciding on which websites
\nto strike and when, then circulating announcements across the web
\nusing flyers distributed on forums and social media platforms and
\nchat rooms.<\/p>\n

One September 2010 flier – allegedly circulated by a defendant
\nand cited by the prosecution – quotes Anonymous as admitting that
\nthe RIAA and MPAA were brought down by the group during a 72-hour
\nspan. Another, which was dated one month later, encouraged
\nAnonymous to \u201csend pizza and other crap<\/i>\u201d to the chairman
\nand CEO of the RIAA.<\/p>\n

In addition to retaliating against the closure of The Pirate Bay,
\nAnonymous also protested the shuttering of Limewire, another
\nfile-sharing service that was brought down with the assistance of
\nthe RIAA. The defendants in the Operation PayBack case allegedly
\ncirculated one flier on the web claiming that the trade group, in
\nshutting down Limewire, \u201cexercised more control than any
\nprivate entity should be allowed<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGlobally, these corporations are trying to censor the
\ninternet, a place without borders, a place where millions freely
\nshare ideas and information<\/i>,\u201d the flier read. \u201cIf Limewire
\nis gone today, what will we lose tomorrow?… When does this
\nstop? Anonymous says it stops right now\u2026Be against censorship. Be
\nagainst private corporations having more rights than the average
\ncitizen. Be against the massive power of copyright labels. We
\nmust fight back. No more shall we wait. It is time for action. If
\nthey dare to take down Limewire, then we shall take down the RIAA
\nin kind.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n

According to a two-year-old Gawker article, defendant Zhiwei Chen
\nwas raided in early 2011 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
\n(FBI). In a Reddit post that has since been deleted, Chen
\nreportedly admitted that the FBI came into his dorm room,
\n\u201cpushed everyone out of bed<\/i>\u201d and \u201csearched the place
\nand questioned all people involved<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

A search warrant reportedly posted on the web by Chen in early
\n2011 revealed that the FBI seized a number of electronic devices,
\nincluding computers, an iPhone, and multiple USB drives from
\nChen.<\/p>\n

Copyright: RT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A federal grand jury has returned an indictment against 13 alleged members of the hacktivist movement Anonymous and has charged them with participating in an anti-copyright campaign that targeted government and corporation websites in 2010 and 2011. The 28-page indictment, unsealed on Thursday, accuses the defendants of engaging in Operation Payback, an Anonymous-led initiative that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75792,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-75789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}