Why Law Enforcement Can't Stop Hackers
On July 19, 2011, FBI agents in nine states rounded up 14 men and two women ranging in age from 21 to 36 for their alleged involvement with the international hacking group Anonymous. Fourteen of these individuals were arrested for allegedly plotting and executing a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack in December 2010 that took down PayPal's Website.
The two other individuals arrested in the sting, both 21, were indicted for separate hacking incidents: one against the Tampa Bay, Fla. InfraGard chapter's Website (InfraGard is an FBI-sponsored public-private partnership devoted to critical infrastructure protection); the other for allegedly hacking into AT&T's systems, stealing thousands of confidential documents and files containing the company's plans for its 4G data and mobile broadband networks, and for posting that information on public file sharing site Fileape.com.
Two months later, on September 22, FBI agents in Los Angeles took a member of LulzSec, an offshoot of Anonymous,into custody for his alleged involvement in a high-profile hack against Sony Pictures in late May and early June. Meanwhile, in San Jose, a federal grand jury brought two men associated with the Peoples Liberation Front hacking group up on charges related to their alleged participation in a DDoS attack that took down Santa Cruz County's Website on December 16, 2010.
