Anonymous activists who engage in offline activism often dress up like this or wear Guy Fawkes masks. "Anonymous", since carrying out DDoS attacks in defense of WikiLeaks, is the target of an FBI cyber-crime investigation. by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid
Update:
Anonymous, a hacktivist organization that had some of its members and friends arrested and targeted yesterday for DDoS attacks in defense of WikiLeaks, is helping to provide support to Egyptians as the uprising unfolds.
Andy Greenberg writes on his blog on Forbes.com, "Egypt has dropped a digital iron curtain over its Internet. So WikiLeaks' fans are using an analog tool to smuggle the secret-spilling site's latest scandals into the country: fax machines. And, adds "the loose hacker group Anonymous began a campaign to fax thousands of copies of WikiLeaks' latest missives -"a series of State Department cables revealing human rights abuses under Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and tacit U.S. backing for his administration -"to Egyptian numbers."
Anonymous put out this press release to "Governments of the World." It states:
Those holding political power in Egypt have chosen to answer the people's calls for democracy with lethal violence. International organisations must take it upon themselves to heed these calls at this turning point in history. Democratic governments cannot idly stand by. We call upon you to take action and show the world that you are on the side of the people and their fight for freedom and democracy.
Your support of the popular uprisings in Arabic countries has been ambiguous, if not absent altogether. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton exemplified the indecisiveness of the international community as she claimed that the US "could not take sides". Neutrality amounts to complicity as totalitarian regimes are showing their contempt for the citizens' right to protest. Mubarak's regime attempted to disconnect the Egyptian people from the rest of the world by cutting off internet communication, while his foot soldiers shot civilians
The press release ends with this statement: "Anonymous has made its choice. We will take sides. We will support people who strive for freedom of speech, assembly and communication - the civil rights essential for the people to forge their own futures."
Earlier in the week, Anonymous called for DDoS attacks on Egyptian government websites.
Previously posted article appears below.
Americans whom the FBI claimed were involved or connected to "distributed denial of serice" (DDoS) attacks on PayPal, Mastercard and Visa, which a loose group of activists known as "Anonymous" took credit for as payback for stopping donations to WikiLeaks. Forty warrants were issued and, although he was not arrested or charged with a crime by the FBI. One San Francisco Bay Area man was reported to have had several computers and a web server confiscated by the FBI.
An FBI press release put out on the search warrants suggests this is part of an ongoing cyber investigation. The release explained, "DDoS are facilitated by software tools designed to damage a computer network's ability to function by flooding it with useless commands and information, thus denying service to legitimate users. A group calling itself "Anonymous" has claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying they conducted them in protest of the companies' and organizations' actions. The attacks were facilitated by the software tools the group makes available for free download on the Internet. The victims included major U.S. companies across several industries."
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