The Anonymous hacking group executed another major cyber attack in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this weekend, claiming it hijacked Russian broadcasters and showed war footage from inside Ukraine.

The hacking collective announced the attack late Sunday evening, saying it was able to manipulate broadcasts on TV channels such as Russia 24, Channel One, and Moscow 24, in addition to streaming services Wink and Ivi.

Anonymous’ Twitter account made the announcement, and also shared footage that appears to show the hijacked broadcasts appearing on televisions in Russia.

It’s unclear if Anonymous hacked the broadcasters in question or were able to manipulate the broadcasts by other means, such as interrupting smart TV streams.

“We are #Anonymous. We are involved in the biggest Anonymous op ever seen,” the group tweeted Monday morning. “That being said, we are worried that some governments will indeed see us as a threat and create some scenario to make us look bad (false flag). We only want peace, not war.

“We abhor violence. We are anti-war. We are against police brutality. We have raised our fists in the air to stand against aggressors time and time again. We would never choose to hurt anyone physically. Understand this and know this if any government says otherwise.”

Anonymous also took credit for taking down Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) on Saturday too, posting a screenshot of its website not being able to connect.

The hack aimed to show the reality of the war to the people of Russia after the country’s regime effectively outlawed independent journalism last week, imposing a maximum jail sentence of 15 years for spreading what it calls ‘misinformation’, and has made numerous attempts to spread falsehoods about the country’s intentions with its efforts.

Videos supposedly showing a Russian prisoner of war, circulating online in recent days, have shown the soldiers were misled about the situation in Ukraine. The government allegedly told its troops that Ukraine was being occupied by a fascist, Nazi-like regime and they were being sent to help the situation, not cause it.

Access to outside information is slowly closing for Russia’s citizens as the country aims to control the narrative of the war.

The Kremlin blocked access to Facebook and Twitter recently after it said the sites were blocking Russian state-backed media.

Legitimate news sources like BBC News have been restricted too, though people in Russia are still able to access such websites via the TOR browser and onion mirrors.

Reporters from British news organisations have been forced to cease their coverage of the war as a result of the Kremlin’s ‘fake news’ law. In addition to a hostile legal environment for journalists, Sky News reporters also reported being shot at by Russian forces despite them making it clear they were from the press.

Journalists sustained gunshot wounds as a result of the ambush, an act that is considered a war crime under international law.

Hackers linked to Anonymous have been hijacking ISIS Twitter accounts and filling them with gay porn in the wake of the Orlando massacre.

US-born Omar Mateen opened fire on partygoers in the Pulse nightclub on Sunday 12 June, an LGBT club in Orlando, Florida. Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53, before police killed him in a shootout.

Mateen called the authorities to pledge his allegiance to terrorist group ISIS during the attack, officials have reported, and warned of "Islamic state vengeance" in posts on Facebook.

The group, in turn, has supported his actions, dubbing him "a soldier of the Caliphate in America" in an official radio broadcast.

In retaliation, hackers have begun taking control on ISIS-affiliated Twitter accounts and using them to broadcast gay porn, as well as gay pride iconography and messages of love and support for the LGBT community.

Several of the accounts are believed to have been hacked by an individual known as WauchulaGhost, who has connections to the hacktivist group Anonymous.

"I did it for the lives lost in Orlando," WauchulaGhost said in an interview with Newsweek, noting that "shit is getting too close to home".

The hacker has allegedly hijacked more than 200 pro-ISIS Twitter accounts, and is aiming to target even more with the help of hackers known as Yeti and Ebony.

"Daesh [ISIS] have been spreading and praising the attack," WauchulaGhost said, "so I thought I would defend those that were lost. The taking of innocent lives will not be tolerated."

However, they were also very clear about the aims and intended target of the campaign. "One thing I do want to say is we aren't using graphic porn and our purpose is not to offend Muslims," WauchulaGhost told Newsweek.

They emphasised that "our actions are directed at Jihadist extremists," and that many of the hackers involved are themselves Muslim. "We respect all religions that do not take innocent lives," they said.

Hacker group Anonymous has admitted it took down Nissan's global and Japanese websites as a protest against Japanese dolphin culling.

Anonymous announced responsibility of the DDoS attack via its Twitter account, saying: "#Anonymous #OpKillingBay .@NissanJP nissan.co.jp #TangoDown #Japan stop the killing now!" with a photo montage of dolphins and Nissan cars.

However, the group said it didn't have plans to steal customer data or distribute it, but it said it wanted to give a warning to Japanese people involved in killing the creatures by bombarding the site with traffic, making it unavailable to people.

"They are a big corporation in Japan, and we have targeted big corporations to spread awareness about the killing [of dolphins] in the cove in Taiji because the Japanese news is censoring it," An anonymous hacker said in a statement. "As a note for Nissan, we are not out to harm your customer data or system data," he continued.

Anonymous planned its attack for the Detroit Auto Show, where Nissan showcased a number of its upcoming launches, including the Titan Warrior concept pickup van. At the time of writing, the Nissan websites were still offline.

"At Nissan, customer privacy and security is of utmost importance, and we take any potential threat to our information systems seriously," a Nissan spokesperson said.

"Because of a potential distributed denial of service attack, we are temporarily suspending service on our websites to prevent further risks. Nissan continuously monitors and takes aggressive steps to ensure the protection of our information systems and all of our data."

Anonymous carried out another attack against Dolphin culling last November, but at that time, it targeted Icelandic governmental organisations, taking down various websites for 13 hours.

16/12/2015: Hackers have claimed to have discovered a number of IP addresses linked to the Department of Work and Pensions being used by ISIS to run a number of social network accounts.

Hacking group VandaSec passed on the details to the Daily Mirror. The group uncovered evidence that at least three terrorist-supporting Twitter accounts can be traced back to IP addresses connected with the department headed by Tory MP Iain Duncan Smith. At the time, the DWP denied owning the IP addresses associated with the accounts.

The UK government later admitted that it had sold a large number of IP addresses that it owned to Saudi Telecom, but didn't reveal how much it had made from the deal.

The Cabinet Office spokesman told the Mirror the government has "sold a number of these addresses to telecoms companies both in the UK and internationally to allow their customers to connect to the internet."

11/12/2015: Anonymous has started a campaign of trolling against ISIS today as part of its ongoing "war" against the terror group.

The hacker group announced the "day of rage" earlier this week in a posting on Ghostbin. It has encouraged internet users to ridicule ISIS via social media by posting mocking photos of the group.

"They thrive off of fear, they hope that by their actions they can silence all of us and get us to just lay low and hide in fear," said Anonymous.

"But what many forget - and even they do - is that there are many more people in the world against them than for them. And that is the goal of this mass uprising, on December 11th we will show them that we are not afraid, we will not just hide in our fear, we are the majority and with our strength in numbers we can make a real difference," it added.

The hackers have said that people should use the hashtags #Deash and #Deashbags when making derogatory postings about ISIS.

08/12/2015: Hackers have uncovered a hidden Android app used by ISIS to spread propaganda videos.

The app comes from the Amaq News Agency, a distribution channel used by terrorists to spread recruitment and propaganda messages.

It featured videos of beheadings and speeches from key ISIS leaders, as well as offering translations in multiple languages.

The software which is not available through google Play and must instead be manually installed was discovered by the Ghost Security Group (GSG)while searching for ISIS-related sites.

The group describes itself as a "counter-terrorism network that combats extremism on the digital front lines of today using the internet and social media as a weapon".

While GSG was initially formed by Anonymous members as a splinter group, it actually has a far more organised structure than its forebear, with clearly-divided hierarchies within its ranks.

It also has partnerships with military movements like the Iraqi Peshmerga and has previously worked with organisations like the CIA.

Other hacktivist' groups like GhostSec are calling for traditional security forces to become much more involved in the cyberwar against ISIS.

Not to be confused with GSG, GhostSec is a collective much more closely aligned with Anonymous, although with similar aims to GSG.

In a recent interview with Sky News, individuals claiming to be GhostSec members Comedi, Ransacker and TorReaper appealed for help in the fight against online terrorism.

Although the group claims that it can keep an ISIS site down for months through DDoS attacks, it said that the speed at which new sites are set up and their increasingly sophisticated defences are making their task more difficult.

"The only break we get is when we're working or sleeping", the hackers said. They claim that when it comes to fighting ISIS on the web, government security personnel "are either ignoring it, don't know how to do it, or they don't have the time or the manpower".

07/12/2015: Anonymous has called for the internet to target ISIS in an international "trolling day".

An anonymous post requests that on 11 December, anti-ISIS protesters and internet users band together to ridicule the group.

The plan mostly revolves around mocking ISIS on social media, with a list of instructions for attacking the group on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, as well as offline protests and demonstrations.

While the group has lately become known for slightly more sophisticated hacking operations, this particular plan of attack evokes Anonymous' roots as puerile internet pranksters.

Suggestions include referring to ISIS members as "Daeshbags", tagging them in pictures of goats "with captions talking about their wives", and making YouTube videos "to mock and belittle Isis members".

There are also darker, less juvenile tactics mentioned, such as posting mocking photos of dead or captured terrorists.

Some, however, are of a more positive nature, like the suggestion that supporters print out pages "showing how ISIS does not represent Islam", reminiscent of the incident in London which inspired the hashtag #YouAintNoMuslimBruv.

The post urges those not affiliated with Anonymous to join in, stating that "anyone can do this" and it "does not require any special skills".

The goal, it says, is to show ISIS that the terrorist group's scare tactics will not work, stating that "they thrive off of fear [and] hope that by their actions they can silence all of us and get us to just lay low and hide".

"On December 11th we will show them that we are not afraid," the post says. "We will not just hide in our fear, we are the majority and with our strength in numbers, we can make a real difference. We will mock them for the idiots they are."

30/11/2015: The hacking collective Anonymous has turned its ire on a new target in its war on ISIS; cloud provider CloudFlare.

The vigilante hackers have accused the firm of using its technology to shelter up to 40 websites that the collective has deemed pro-ISIS'.

CloudFlare uses a cloud-based content delivery network to stop websites being taken offline by malicious threat actors.

One of the main things it defends against is Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, a favourite technique of Anonymous.

"Once again, @CloudFlare have been found to be providing services to pro #IslamicState websites", an Anonymous-affiliated account tweeted.

The tweet references an incident in 2013 when CloudFlare had similar claims levelled at it, this time due to its hosting of a mujahideen site with ties to Al Qaeda.

CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince swiftly dismissed these accusations as "armchair analysis by kids", calling them "hard to take seriously" in a conversation with The Register.

He cited the fact that Anonymous itself uses his company's services, and has not had their websites removed despite the controversy the group is often mired in.

He also stated that there would be no mileage in these sites for CloudFlare as he "should imagine those kinds of people pay with stolen credit cards".

26/11/2015: ISIS has been dealt another blow in its war with Anonymous.

Isdarat, a site supposedly used to disseminate pro-ISIS news and propaganda, was hijacked to display a mocking message and a banner ad for an online Viagra and Prozac pharmacy.

"Too Much ISIS", the message read. "Enhance your calm. Too many people are into this ISIS-stuff. Please gaze upon this lovely ad so we can upgrade our infrastructure to give you ISIS content you all so desperately crave."

Responsibility for the stunt was claimed by GhostSec, an Anonymous-affiliated hacktivist collective.

Reports suggest that the site was targeted after hackers discovered its .onion address on the anonymous Tor network.

18/11/2015: Islamic State has released guidelines to its members about how to protect themselves against hacks via their Twitter, Facebook and email accounts.

The news comes after Internet collective Anonymous vowed revenge on ISIS following the recent atrocities in Paris and exposed 800 Facebook, Twitter and email accounts linked to ISIL members.

Islamic State offshoot ISIL distributed five points of guidance for members, detailing measures they can take to resist attacks from the hacker group.

The message was sent via Telegram, which is an encrypted instant messaging app via the Khalifa news channel, which experts believe is an unofficial pro-ISIS news source.

Researchers at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, based in London translated the message as saying: "The #Anonymous hackers have threatened in a new video release that they will carry out a major hack operation operation on the Islamic state (idiots)."

It went on to say members should not open links they receive from unknown sources, use a VPN and change their IP address constantly, avoid talking to people they don't know on Telegram and block them, avoid talking to people via DM and change usernames on social media so they are not identical to email addresses.

Anonymous sent out a warning immediately following the Paris attacks, with various members of the group, many dressed in its quasi-uniform of Guy Fawkes mask and hoodie, posting videos to YouTube declaring their intentions to launch "massive cyber attacks" against the terrorist organisation.

One, emblazoned with the slogan "we are uniting humanity", stated that Anonymous will be targeting social media accounts linked with ISIS recruitment and propaganda.

Anonymous' structure and hierarchy or lack thereof means that no one individual can speak for the group. This particular motion, however, has proved understandably popular, with multiple affiliated Twitter accounts banding together to pledge their support via the #OpParis hashtag.

Anonymous has reminded the world that it's been at war with ISIS for "quite some time already", and the announcement echoes the action taken against Islamic State following the Charlie Hebdo massacre in January 2015.

Members of the collective repeatedly hacked Twitter feeds and websites as part of #OpISIS, shutting down many of the group's propaganda outlets.

Social media and other internet tools are becoming an increasingly important part of both terrorist operations and the fight against them.

For example, Anonymous has recently claimed the so-called Cyber Caliphate', an ISIS hacking group supposedly behind many security intrusions, operates out of a single IP address in Kuwait.

It also claimed that many of their attacks were also fakes, in which they release publicly-available information and claim that it's been hacked.

Anonymous has wrecked havoc on the the social media accounts of Islamic extremist group ISIS, as part of its recently announced #OpISIS hacking campaign.

The hacking collective published a statement of its intent on text-sharing website Pastebin on 6 February, alongside a list of the Twitter and Facebook accounts belonging to ISIS it claims to have taken down.

"ISIS we will hunt you, take down your sites, accounts, emails, and expose you," the statement reads.

"From now on, [there will be] no safe place for you online... You will be treated like a virus, and we are the cure."

This statement was followed up days later by a second list containing hundreds more Twitter accounts that it has subsequently targeted, along with details of Facebook pages, Google + details, websites and email addresses too.

A check through the list reveals a number of Twitter pages confirming the listed pages no longer exist, alongside ones who appear to have had their details and past tweets wiped.

The group also says there will be more to come soon.

The decision to target ISIS affiliated social media accounts is likely to be an attempt by Anonymous to disrupt the way the organisation distributes propaganda, targets possible recruits and publicises details of its attacks.

This isn't the first time Anonymous has turned its attention to Islamic extremists, as the hacking group also targeted websites belonging to them in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack last month in Paris.

The group reportedly deployed a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack to take down a French Jihadist website during this phase.

The Anonymous hacking group has reportedly brought down an Islamic extremist website as revenge for the Charlie Hebdo attack.

Although not officially claimed by the Anonymous, the imagery being displayed correlates with the masked figure traditionally used as a logo by the hacking collective.

The mission has been dubbed #OpCharlieHebdo and hopes to bring justice for last week's Paris attack by targeting Islamic extremists.

The first target was ansar-alhaqq.net, a French jihadist website. The website was down for more than an hour and it is believed that Anonymous carried out a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, which floods the victim with fake traffic to make its servers crumble under the requests.

A press release, claiming to be issued by Anonymous, said: "It's obvious that some people don't want, in a free world, this sacrosanct right to express in any way one's opinions. Anonymous has always fought for the freedom of speech, and will never let this right [be] besmirched by obscurantism and mysticism.

"Freedom of speech and opinion is a non-negotiable thing, to tackle it is to attack democracy. Expect a massive frontal reaction from us because the struggle for the defense of those freedoms is the foundation of our movement."

Previously, high-profile websites have been subject to such attacks by Anonymous including Mastercard and PayPal, plus governmental organisations GCHQ, the Home Office and ICO.

Last summer, the group started its campaign against Islamic extremists, taking down Twitter accounts and preventing members communicating to protect the Western World.

A study has shone some partial light on how widely the Tor network is used to access sites featuring child abuse images and those that allow users to buy illegal drugs.

The results revealed the majority of hidden Tor site requests lead to child abuse pictures, while the second top search was for illegal drugs.

Dr Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouth, who collated the data over a six month period, said: "It might look like there are lots of people visiting these sites but it is difficult to conclude that from this information. What proportion are people and which are something else? We simply don't know."

Although most of the traffic going through Tor is to legitimate sites that are being used to surf the web anonymously, rather than for illegal activity, 1.5 per cent of all searches were directed at .onion sites.

A total of 80,000 of these sites were uncovered, although the majority were removed after being visited. "Most of the hidden services we only saw once. They do not tend to exist for a very long time," he said.

The most popular content on the .onion sites was associated with illegal drugs, underground markets, fraud sites, mail services and Bitcoin dealerships.

Other services were being used to control botnets and prevent them from infiltrating home networks. However, because many of these botnets now cease to exist, commands were still using Tor to crawl dormant command systems, the BBC explained.

Dr Owen was able to collate the data by setting up servers to join the Tor network, which then tracked services the visitors were using. The system could then follow the users and download HTML files that exposed how many people were visiting the sites and the types of information displayed.

Tor was created to help people stay anonymous when browsing the web, and many of its users are said to be human rights activists who want to protect their identity rather than criminals, Roger Dingledine, one of the Tor network's original developers told the BBC.

Hacking group Anonymous has hijacked two Twitter accounts belonging to US white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan.

The hackers took control of the accounts as part of its Operation KKK or OpKKK initiative. Anonymous also used Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks to take down a number of KKK-related websites.

The attacks come after members of a group calling itself the "Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan" threatened "lethal force" in a message posted online against Ferguson campaigners protesting about the 9 August shooting of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown in the area. KKK members also handed out flyers, inciting further unrest.

A grand jury is set to decide if police officer Darren Wilson should have criminal charges brought against him.

Anonymous posted a video on YouTube to launch Operation KKK. In it Anonymous said: "We are not attacking you because of what you believe in as we fight for freedom of speech. We are attacking you because of what you did to our brothers and sisters at the Ferguson protest on 12 November.

"Due to your actions we have started Operation KKK. The aim of our operation is nothing more than Cyber Warfare. Anything you upload will be taken down; anything you use to promote the KKK will be shut down," it warned.

Following the Twitter account takeover, Anonymous said it would "dox" or make public personal details of KKK members and conduct a campaign of harassment against them.

In a statement posted on Pastebin, an Anonymous member said: "When society accepts racism, violence against people and their homes, and allows people to be arrested without proof or rights for a defence, justice shows its ideological and partial side. It's a symptom and ideological. Protest against Ku Klux Klan is, symbolically, stand against the ideology that causes death and suffering."

Anonymous took to the Ku Klux Klan's Twitter account to brand the organisation a terrorist group.

"The blood of thousands of human beings are on the hands of Klansmen. In most Anonymous members' eyes, the KKK no longer has the right to express their racist, bigoted opinions," it tweeted.

Cult sharing app Secret has arrived on Android after its debut on iOS with a heap of new features that are not offered on Apple's mobile platform.

Secret allows you to post messages to an online forum, completely anonymously. Anyone using the app can see your messages, but it does not reveal your identity.

Other users of the app can like, share and comment on your messages, making them become viral if it's something particularly shocking, controversial or funny, for example.

Your Friends community is set up when you sign up for the app, entering your email address and phone number, which then collates all your contacts and their friends using Secret into a list.

Alternatively, you can head to the Explore tab where you'll see posts from around the world.

It's thought many of the big tech news stories broke on the iOS version of Secret, including scoops like the end of the Nike Fuelband.

Secret arrived in the UK on iOS in April and just a month after, the developer decided to roll it out on Android too, with a range of new features including the ability to answer 'icebreakers', where users can share information about themselves, anonymously of course.

Co-founder Chrys Bader told the Guardian: "We wanted to show that Android can have new features first. And we wanted to reward them for waiting all this time."

"We were calling them icebreakers internally. One we had recently asked 'What's the last lie that you told?' We're trying to give people more stuff to share."

The aim of this is to get shy people to answer the icebreaker question and then share it to their network around the world.

Another new addition is allowing users to see simple information about their followers in their stream, plus exactly how many people you have in your Friends stream.

Three men have pleaded guilty to cyber attacks on a number of organisations in 2011. They were part of the LulzSec hacking group.

LulzSec was a spin-off of the hackivist collective Anonymous. Lulzsec emerged briefly during 2011 and carried out attacks during a period from May to June that year it called "50 days of Lulz".

Ryan Ackroyd admitted being part of the group and pleaded guilty to attacks targeting Sony, Nintendo, News International and the Arizona State Police. Ackroyd, a 26-year-old from Mexborough in South Yorkshire, admitted plotting the attacks as part of an eight-month campaign in 2011. Ackroyd adopted the persona of a 16-year-old girl, named "Kayla" within the group.

He pleaded guilty to one charge of "conspiring to do an unauthorized act to impair the operation of a computer or computers." alongside Jake Davis, a 20-year-old from Shetland, and Mustafa al-Bassam, an 18-year-old from Peckham, who also pleaded guilty to a single hacking charge each.

The trio were behind a string of attacks targeting Nintendo, News International, 20th Century Fox, Sony Group and the NHS. The group managed to plant a news story on the Sun website that Rupert Murdoch had died.

The three were arrested after the group's leader, Hector Monsegur known as "Sabu" was arrested by the FBI and persuaded to become an informant.

Crown Prosecutor Prosecutor Sandip Patel told the court that Akroyd "was the hacker, so to speak; they turned to him for his expertise as a hacker."

The three will be sentenced on 14 May alongside 21-year-old Ryan Cleary, who earlier pleaded guilty to six hacking charges related to LulzSec, including an attack on Pentagon computers. The three could face sentences of up to ten years in prison.

Hacking group Anonymous claims to have taken control of the social media accounts of Uriminzokkiri, the online face of North Korea's state news agency.

Calling themselves AnonKorea, the hacktivists have taken over Uriminzokkiri's Twitter and Flickr accounts, as well as forcing the organisation's website offline.

The group used the hijacked Twitter account to lay claim to hacking other North Korean websites ryugyongclip.com, ryomyong.com, aindf.com and ournation-school.com.

All of the allegedly hacked websites were offline when IT Pro tried to access them.

The hackers also claim to have stolen 15,000 usernames and passwords from Uriminzokkiri and pasted a sample online.

The attacks come as part of "Operation Free Korea", which commenced with a series of Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks over the weekend against the country's official website and the state-owned airline Air Koryo.

Anonymous says it will end its cyber attacks if the North Korean government stops "making nukes and nuke-threats".

North Korea has recently raised the stakes in an increasingly tense relationship between it, its southern neighbour South Korea and the USA, promising to restart a mothballed nuclear complex and threatening to launch a missile against America.

Anonymous has also demanded North Korea's dynastic dictator Kim Jong Un resigns, making way for a "free direct democracy" and urged the people of North Korea to "rise up and bring ... [this] oppressive government down!"

"We are holding your back and your hand, while you take the journey to freedom, democracy and peace. You are not alone," the group said.

North Korea is not the first nation to be targeted by Anonymous. In 2012, the loose hacking collective targeted Syria, Israel, Uganda and the UK, as well as a number of non-national targets.

The U.S. Federal Reserve (The Fed) has said it is still working to determine the extent its computer systems had been breached by hackers, adding that the incident was the subject of a criminal probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"We are in the process of a comprehensive assessment to determine what information might have been obtained in this incident," said Federal Reserve spokesman Jim Strader.

"We remain confident that this incident did not affect critical operations of the Federal Reserve."

It is possible more information might still be released by the hackers

The online intrusion, which has embarrassed the U.S. central bank and raised questions about the effectiveness of its security, was publicised on Sunday by activist group Anonymous.

The integrity of the Fed's systems is vital to ensure confidence in its ability to securely transmit highly confidential information, including communications about U.S. monetary policy and the banks that it supervises.

The Fed statement on Thursday was its first explicit acknowledgment that it did not yet know the extent of the security breach. Cyber-security specialists say it takes time to thoroughly investigate a stealthy intrusion by skilled hackers.

Anonymous claimed that it had published personal information from more than 4,000 U.S. bank executives gleaned from a password-protected Fed website.

The website, called the Emergency Communication System (ECS), exists to provide bank contact information in the event of a natural or other disaster. It is managed by the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank.

A message sent by the Fed to ECS users and obtained by Reuters on Tuesday warned that personal information, including mobile and business telephone numbers, email and business addresses, had been obtained by the online intruders.

Strader said it was possible that more information might still be released by the hackers, but declined to spell out if data from a site other than the ECS had been obtained.

"This incident is the subject of an active criminal investigation with the FBI and we cannot comment further," he said.

The Fed also declined to comment on when the attack took place, how long it took for the breach to be discovered and what type of system or vulnerability was exploited.

A review by Reuters of the code on the ECS site home page shows it runs on ColdFusion, a program used to build websites that software maker Adobe Systems patched in mid-January to repair several critical security flaws.

The company said hackers could take advantage of those bugs to break into computer systems, access restricted files and take control of affected servers.

The Fed's inspector general recommended in a 2012 audit published in November that the central bank implement a security review process for third party systems located outside its system. The Fed was not immediately able to clarify if the ECS website breached by Anonymous fell in this category.

The information published by Anonymous so far has not ruffled feathers among the bankers affected.

"It hasn't been much of a hassle," said Jo David Cummins, president and CEO of Community First Bank of the Heartland in Illinois. "The information that was on the contact system was the same thing that was on my business card, so it wasn't like it was anything that could do any harm to me or the bank."

The hacking claim was made via Twitter over an account registered to OpLastResort, which is linked to Anonymous, a loosely organized group of hacker activists who have claimed responsibility for scores of attacks on government and corporate sites over the past several years.

OpLastResort is a campaign that some hackers associated with Anonymous have started to protest against the government's prosecution of computer prodigy Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide on Jan. 11.

Swartz was charged with using the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's computer networks to steal more than 4 million articles from JSTOR, an online archive and journal distribution service. He faced a maximum sentence of 31 years if convicted.

Cyber-security specialists said they assumed the Fed is under constant attack from hackers, including by state-sponsored online snoopers, and that most strikes go unreported.

In a rare admission, the Cleveland Fed confirmed in 2010 that it had been attacked online. Cleveland Fed spokeswoman June Gates said a test computer was compromised, but the hacker failed to access any Fed information. The incident came to light when the crime was prosecuted in a New York court in November 2010.

The US Federal Reserve has fallen victim to hackers who managed to breach the central bank's internal websites, although no critical functions are known to have been affected.

The admission, which raises questions about cyber security at the Fed, follows a claim that hackers linked to the activist group Anonymous had struck the Fed on Sunday, accessing personal information of more than 4,000 US bank executives, which it published online.

"The Federal Reserve system is aware that information was obtained by exploiting a temporary vulnerability in a website vendor product," a Fed spokeswoman said.

Despite claims to the contrary, passwords were not compromised.

"Exposure was fixed shortly after discovery and is no longer an issue. This incident did not affect critical operations of the Federal Reserve system," the spokeswoman said, adding that all individuals effected by the breach had been contacted.

Anonymous appeared to have published information allegedly containing the login information, credentials, internet protocol addresses and contact information of more than 4,000 US bankers on Sunday night.

The claim was made via Twitter over an account registered to OpLastResort, which is linked to Anonymous.

OpLastResort is a campaign that some hackers linked to Anonymous have started to protest government prosecution of computer prodigy Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide on January 11.

The Fed declined to identify which website had been hacked. But information that it provided to bankers indicated that the site, which was not public, was a contact database for banks to use during a natural disaster.

A copy of the message sent by the Fed to members of its Emergency Communication System (ECS), which was obtained by Reuters, warned that mailing address, business phone, mobile phone, business email, and fax numbers had been published.

"Some registrants also included optional information consisting of home phone and personal email. Despite claims to the contrary, passwords were not compromised," the Fed said.

The central bank separately confirmed the authenticity of the message to ECS members.

The website's purpose is to allow bank executives to update the Fed if their operations have been flooded or otherwise damaged in a storm or other disaster. That helps the Fed to assess the overall impact of the event on the banking system.

Hackers identifying themselves as Anonymous infiltrated the US Sentencing Commission website late last month to protest the government's treatment of the Swartz case.

Swartz was charged with using the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's computer networks to steal more than 4 million articles from JSTOR, an online archive and journal distribution service. He faced a maximum sentence of 31 years if convicted.

Cyber-security specialists said that any organization's computer systems could be breached, and that it was up to an organization like the Fed to prioritize its security needs, in order to protect its most sensitive information from attack.

"Every system is going to have some vulnerability to it. You cannot set up a system that will survive all possible attacks," said Mark Rasch, director of Privacy and security consulting at CSC and a former federal cyber crimes prosecutor.

"You have to defend against every possible vulnerability and the attackers only have to find one way in," he said.

Hackers attacked Twitter over the weekend, gaining access to sensitive information including the passwords of up to 250,000 user accounts..

Twitter said in a blog post that the passwords were encrypted and that it had already reset them as a "precautionary measure," and that it was in the process of notifying affected users.

The blog post noted recent revelations of large-scale cyber attacks against the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, but unlike the two news organizations, Twitter did not provide any detail on the origin or methodology of the attacks.

"This attack was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident," Twitter said.

"The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other companies and organizations have also been recently similarly attacked."

Twitter has 200 million active monthly users, said it was working with government and federal law enforcement officials to track down the attackers.

The company did not specifically link the attacks to China in the blog post, in contrast to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, which both said the hackers originated in China.

Twitter could not speculate on the origin of the attacks as its investigation was ongoing, said spokesman Jim Prosser.

"There is no evidence right now that would indicate that passwords were compromised," said Prosser.

The attack is not the first time that hackers have breached Twitter's systems and gained access to Twitter user information. Twitter signed a consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission in 2010, subjecting the company to 10 years of independent privacy reviews, for failing to safeguard users' personal information.

A social network has been launched that lets users remain anonymous, leaving them free to discuss topics they may usually feel uncomfortable talking about online.

It's called Social Number (www.socialnumber.com), and enables users to broach topics they would not normally talk about on social networks where they can be easily identified.

Social Number said its rivals were phasing out anonymous users, allowing its website to be one of the few left where people from around the world can openly discuss politics, religion, their personal life and any other contentious topics of their choosing.

To sign up to the service, users just have to think up a unique ten-digit number.

The site provides a screen keypad to enter the digits on sign-up and, once inside, users can start posting.

The website provides very little detail about itself, apart from the fact it was incorporated in the US state of Delaware, and features no adverts.

The chief executive and co-founder of Social Number, who goes by the initials M.K, said the company was empowering users to "have a free voice" and discuss issues that some might deem "untouchable" in public forums.

"Hot button topics like politics and religion to discussing your boss to substance abuse are some of threads users are gravitating towards. But I believe there are many other topics people want to discuss openly without the fear of repercussions," said M.K.

"Today, there is very little privacy on any social network, resulting in employees being fired and government interrogations for free thinking. On Social Number, your number is your only identity, showcasing the true value of anonymity," M.K. added.

A Northampton student has been accused of taking part in a cyber attack that cost online payment portal PayPal 3.5 million.

Christopher Weatherhead is alleged to have joined forces with Anonymous hacktivists to stage an attack against PayPal over its refusal to process payments related to the funding of whistleblowing website Wikileaks.

Weatherhead, who was studying at Northampton University when the attacks took place, has pleaded not guilty to conspiring to impair the operation of computers between 1 August 2010 and 22 January 2011.

Those attacks caused unprecedented harm.

Several others, including Ashley Rhodes from Camberwell, South London, Peter Gibson, from Hartlepool and another male, who cannot be named for legal reasons, have already pleaded guilty to the same charge.

Weatherhead has been accused of using an Internet Relay Chat site to encourage people to take part in a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on PayPal.

According to the BBC News site, prosecutor Sandip Patel is reported to have told the court: "It is the prosecution case that Christopher Weatherhead is a cyber-attacker and that he, and others like him, waged a sophisticated and orchestrated campaign of online attacks that paralysed a series of targeted computer systems.

"Those attacks caused unprecedented harm," he added.

The attack caused Paypal "enormous economic harm", he claimed, and more than 100 employees from PayPal's parent company eBay had to be enlisted to help repair the damage.

The company was also forced to invest in hardware and software to defend itself against similar attacks in future, which in total cost the firm 3.5 million.

The trial continues.

Web hosting firm GoDaddy has been forced to deny that its recent service outage was caused by hackers.

The company said the service outage, which took millions of websites offline on Monday night, was not caused by external influences.

"We have determined the service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables," said the company in a statement.

"Once the issues were identified, we took corrective actions to restore services for our customers and GoDaddy.com. We have implemented measures to prevent this from occurring again," it added.

GoDaddy chief executive Scott Wagner released a further statement, stressing that no customer data had been compromised during the outage.

"Throughout our history, we have provided 99.999 per cent uptime in our DNS infrastructure. This is the level our customers expect from us and the level we expect of ourselves," he said.

"We have let our customers down and we know it. We take our business and our customers' businesses very seriously. We apologise to our customers for these events and thank them for their patience."

The statement did not make any mention of customer compensation for those that may have lost business during Monday night's outage.

The company's services were first noted as being inaccessible around 10am Pacific Time.

Shortly after the outage occurred, a hacker, dubbed Anonymousown3r, claimed responsibility and described themselves as the "security leader" of Anonymous.

A Twitter account often connected with Anonymous, @AnonyOps, dissociated the collective from the individual's alleged activities.

AnonymousOwn3r was quick to respond to GoDaddy's statement in a tweet, and warned they were considering mounting another attack on GoDaddy's infrastructure in the near future.

Web hosting firm GoDaddy has reportedly fallen victim to a cyber attack by hacking group Anonymous.

The incident resulted in millions of websites hosted by the firm going offline yesterday evening, as the firm's DNS servers went down.

As a precaution, GoDaddy provisionally redirected its DNS traffic to VeriSign, which also registers domain names as ".com" and ".net".

It posted a short update on Twitter, alerting users to the problem.

"Status Alert: Hey, all. We're aware of the trouble people are having with our site. We're working on it," the company tweeted.

An hour later the firm posted a further update, which read: "Most customer hosted sites back online. We're working out the last few kinks for our site and control centres. No customer data compromised."

The firm did not go into any detail over the cause the problem or say anything about compensation for the affected websites.

Elizabeth Driscoll, vice president of public relations for GoDaddy, said the outage started around 10.25am local time (6.25pm UK time) and the bulk of its services were restored over two hours later.

"At no time was any sensitive customer information, such as credit card data, passwords or names and addresses, compromised," she wrote.

"We will provide an additional update within the next 24 hours. We want to thank our customers for their patience and support."

We want to thank our customers for their patience and support.

A hacker calling themselves Anonymousown3r claimed responsibility for the attack.

The individual affiliates themselves with Anonymous, but others connected to the group said the hacker was acting alone.

"Please redirect your GoDaddy hate to @AnonymousOwn3r [who] says is the 'leader' of Anonymous. #derp Have #lulz with that," said a tweet from @YourAnonNews.

It is thought the hacker took down the sites in protest at GoDaddy's initial support for the US government's proposed Stop Piracy Online Act.

However, GoDaddy reversed its position soon afterwards following massive protests on the internet.

Meanwhile, security industry professionals described the attacks as "nothing new".

Chester Wisniewski of security software company Sophos said there are ways of mitigating DNS attacks.

"It might be a good time to review your critical infrastructure and ask your service providers what capabilities they have to ensure your business stays online if you are targeted or have equipment failures," he advised in a blog post.

The websites of intelligence services MI5 and MI6 were brought down for an hour yesterday in protest over attempts by the British government to extradite Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to Sweden.

Between 9am and 11.30am the sis.gov.uk and mi5.gov.uk websites were hit and left inaccessible.

Renowned hacking group Anonymous claimed it brought the sites down using a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, as part of its ongoing #OpFreeAssange (Operation Free Assange) protests.

These attacks should serve as fair warning to any government agency or business that operates online.

The Wikileaks founder is wanted for questioning in Sweden over sexual misconduct charges, which he has repeatedly denied.

Assange fears he will be extradited to the US if sent to Sweden.

The websites of the Swedish government, Armed Forces and the Swedish Institute were also thought to have been attacked in protest.

Swedish Armed Forces Niklas Englund told the Associated Press that an unidentified group claimed responsibility for the attack by tweeting the words "Hands off Assange."

However, a series of tweets from Anonymous appear to admit responsibility for the attacks.

Security professionals said that the most disconcerting thing about the protests were that Anonymous seem to have found ways to circumvent the government's new security defences.

"Although these comments may be sensationalising the attack that brought down both sites for just over an hour, it should serve as fair warning to any government agency or business that operates online," said Paul Lawrence, international operations vice president at Corero Network Security.

"A motivated hacker who has targeted your organisation will find even the smallest of flaws in your security and exploit it."

Lawrence added that the hacktivists have proven time and again that they are capable and willing to take down high profile sites, no matter who their target may be.

"Any and every site can be a target and the sooner businesses and government agencies come to understand this, the sooner they can start putting in place measures to protect themselves, and limit the damage that an attack may cause," he said.

Anonymous has launched an attack to bring down a number of UK Government websites in protest at the handling of the Julian Assange case.

The loose collective of hackers and internet activists claimed responsibility for bringing down the Ministry of Justice website via a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack and said it is also targeting Number 10. The website had reportedly been experiencing disruption since the evening of 20 August.

Investigation by IT Pro found service to be intermittent at justice.gov.uk but number10.gov.uk to be currently unaffected.

Anonymous has long supported Assange, founder of Wikileaks, who is currently taking refuge inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning over alleged sexual misconduct allegations, which he denies.

In a statement issued to IT Pro, a Ministry of Justice spokesperson sought to allay fears as to the nature of the attack.

"This is a public information website and no sensitive data is held on it. No other Ministry of Justice systems have been affected," the spokesperson said.

"Measures put in place to keep the website running mean that some visitors may be unable to access the site intermittently.

"We will continue to monitor the situation and will take measures accordingly."

A DDoS attack involved overloading servers with requests, making it inaccessible. Such attacks are illegal in most countries, but have become a favourite method of protest for groups such as Anonymous, Team Poison and AntiLeaks over the past two years.

Emails released by WikiLeaks appear to show the UK Government and London's Metropolitan Police Service (Met) are involved in controversial surveillance network, TrapWire.

One email in a set stolen from global intelligence firm Stratfor by hactivists Anonymous and leaked via WikiLeaks states:

"We have an agreement in principle with Abraxas (TrapWire) to provide streaming sitreps' to their clients via their desktop/homepage by the end of July. Their clients include Scotland Yard, #10 Downing, the White House, and many MNC's (multinational corporations)."

TrapWire is a surveillance service that collates data from CCTV cameras, number plate readers and open source databases. It is understood to use facial recognition technology and reportedly also scours social networks with the aim of catching terrorists in the planning and reconnaissance phases of an attack.

The service is proving controversial, as privacy activists are concerned TrapWire is too intrusive and could be used to profile and store data on innocent people. Additionally, according to a white paper produced by TrapWire's parent company Abraxas, the bigger the service gets, the more powerful it becomes and emails released by WikiLeaks indicate an intention to unify the service across geopolitical jurisdictions.

Further controversy surrounds the relationship between Abraxas, which provides what it describes as "risk mitigation technology for the national security community", and Stratfor, which has been described variously as a shadow' and private' CIA.

A statement from Anonymous said: "The more we learn about TrapWire and similar systems, it becomes absolutely clear that we must at all costs shut this system down and render it useless.

"A giant AI electronic brain able to monitor us through a combination of access to all the CCTV cameras as well as all the online social media feeds is monstrous and Orwellian in it's (sic) implications and possibilities. [We] will now put forth a call to arms, and initiate the doom of this evil and misbegotten program."

A UK Government spokesperson refused to confirm or deny its use of the TrapWire system. A spokesperson for the Met, on the other hand, told IT Pro "We have no knowledge of any contract or discussion re the product."

Ryan Cleary, a 20-year-old British citizen, has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles. He stands accused of working with hacking group Lulzsec and participating in internet attacks on Fox and PBS television networks as well as Sony's film and TV studio.

Cleary is currently in custody in the UK awaiting prosecution over similar charges. He is accused of joining other members of LulzSec in harnessing compromised computers, known as a "botnet," to steal confidential information, deface websites or attack servers. He was indicted on Tuesday.

Cleary is charged with one count of conspiracy and two counts of unauthorised impairment of a protected computer.

"Cleary is a skilled hacker. He controlled his own botnet, employed sophisticated methods and his broad geographic scope affected a large number of businesses and individuals," FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said.

LulzSec, an offshoot of the international hacking group Anonymous, has taken credit for hacking attacks on government and private sector websites.

Anonymous and its offshoots, including LulzSec and AntiSec, initially focused on fighting attempts at Internet regulation and the blocking of free illegal downloads, but have since taken on such targets as Scientology and the global banking system.

The charges come just over two months after accused LulzSec hacker Cody Kretsinger pleaded guilty in US District Court in Los Angeles to taking part in an extensive computer breach of Sony Pictures Entertainment.

In March, court documents revealed that Anonymous leader "Sabu," whose real name is Hector Xavier Monsegur, had pleaded guilty to hacking-related charges and provided the FBI with information on fellow hackers.

According to the indictment released by the FBI, Cleary and his unnamed co-conspirators hacked into the computer systems of News Corp's Fox and Sony Pictures and stole confidential user information.

The indictment also charges Cleary and his co-conspirators of defacing the PBS website and launching "denial of service" attacks against an online gaming website and Britain's Serious Organized Crime Agency.

Eimiller said federal authorities would "allow the prosecution to take its course" against Cleary overseas before deciding whether to seek his extradition to the United States. He is next scheduled to be in court in the UK on June 25.

If convicted in the US, Cleary could face a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison.

Anonymous, and LulzSec in particular, became notorious in late 2010 when they launched what they called the "first cyber war" in retaliation for attempts to shut down the WikiLeaks website.

They attacked websites including those of MasterCard, which had tried to block payments to WikiLeaks after apparent pressure from the US government following the release of thousands of diplomatic cables.

Controversial torrent sharing site The Pirate Bay claims hacking group Anonymous was not responsible for the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack that took the site offline for 24 hours.

The Pirate Bay used its Facebook page to confirm that it had fallen victim to "quite a big DDoS attack" and has "suspicions" as to who might be responsible.

We know that it is not Anonymous who is behind the DDoS attack.

Anonymous was then swiftly removed from the site's list of suspects.

"Just to clarify, we know that it is not Anonymous who is behind the DDoS attack. Stop spreading rumours like that," the organisation said on its Facebook page.

"We may not agree with Anonymous in everything, but we both want the internet to be open and free," it added.

Andr Stewart, president international at Corero Network Security, said the site's takedown is proof of just how popular DDoS has become.

"As the message of Anonymous spreads, more and more hackers are turning to the use of DDoS attacks as a form of protest," he added.

Stewart said the website claims to be the most resilient torrent site, and deals with a lot of internet traffic. "Therefore, the attackers would need to be a very organised group who would be able to take [it] down with a DDoS attack."

These types of attack tend to be ongoing, which would explain why some users have been able to access the site intermittently throughout the day, added Stewart.

"The attack is clearly the work of a group with some significant firepower and intelligence in how these types of attack work," he said.

The attack on The Pirate Bay comes just days after anonymous attacked Virgin Media after the ISP was forced by a court order to ban access to the site.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has confirmed that it's still dealing with the fallout from a suspected Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on its website.

In a statement sent to IT Pro, the data watchdog said access to the site has been disrupted over the last several days because of the attack.

"The website itself has not been damaged, but people have been unable to access it. We provide a public facing website which contains no sensitive information," the statement said.

"We regret this disruption to our service and we are working to bring the website back online as soon as possible."

At the time of writing, the site was still offline.

Notorious hacking group, Anonymous, has repeatedly urged its Twitter followers to besiege the ICO's site since 12 May.

The tweets, which were published by the @UKAnonymous2012 account, claim the attack is part of a protest by the group at the handling of the Leveson Inquiry, which is currently looking into the behaviour of the UK press.

Incidentally, the Leveson Inquiry's website has also been the target of DDoS attacks by Anonymous this week.

In a blog post, dated yesterday, the group described the inquiry as a "farce" and a "show trial".

"Instead of having a criminal court whereby investigations are conducted to unearth the scale of the crime, this show trial has been arranged so that there is no real investigation," said the post.

"Why? Because Government and judiciary with the media have conspired to create a process outside of the court's jurisdiction to avoid anyone being held accountable for the crimes committed by the parties."

The post then goes on to criticise the ICO for lacking independence and failing to protect the public from data protection breaches.

"Eighty per cent of data protection breaches in the UK are committed by the UK civil service and [are] not properly investigated," the blog claimed.

"There is zero commitment by all our regulators to protect UK citizens from data protection breaches."

Andr Stewart, president international at vendor Corero Network Security, said the ICO attack is proof that government organisations need better protection from cyber criminals.

"DDoS attacks are becoming a regular occurrence against government websites. In fact, any organisation that relies on the Internet to conduct business is a potential target," said Stewart.

"And these highly public DDoS attacks are increasingly being used as a diversion or smokescreen to launch more surreptitious attacks aimed at stealing data or sensitive information."

Government surveillance agency GCHQ has hit back at claims its website was taken offline on Saturday by hacking group Anonymous.

The group's UK arm announced GCHQ's website as the target for its latest round of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks last week.

The weekly attacks are part of an ongoing protest by Anonymous against the UK government's extradition treaties with the US.

The GCHQ website was not taken down at all.

This week's attack, which started at 8pm on Saturday night, was the second time in two weeks the group has targeted GCHQ's website.

In a tweet sent by the @AnonATeam account, it was claimed the attack had succeeded, with the group posting a screen grab of the GCHQ site reading "service unavailable."

However, speaking to IT Pro earlier today, a GCHQ spokesperson denied this claim, before declining a request for a formal statement.

"What I can say is that the website was not taken down at all," he added.

The weekend proved to be a busy one for Anonymous, with the group staging further attacks in the UK and abroad, with mixed results.

Anonymous attacked government websites in Bahrain to demonstrate its displeasure at decision to stage a Formula One grand prix there this weekend.

The collective also staged an abortive DDoS attack on the Number 10 website on Sunday, before admitting it lacked the manpower needed to successively take the site down.

A tweet sent by the @AnonOpsUK account, less than an hour after the attack started, said the group had failed "miserably".

"Why is Number 10 such a b****r to down," asked the group in a follow-up post. "Unlike the Home Office, which can be down just by pressing the refresh button."

Hacking group Anonymous failed to take several Government websites offline last weekend, despite subjecting them to a sustained Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

At the start of the month, Anonymous used social networking site Twitter to announce plans to stage DDoS attacks against Government websites every Saturday night.

The group made good on this pledge last week by targeting the Home Office website, making inaccessible to users for several hours.

The Government line on this is that our services and systems were unharmed across all sites

Over the weekend, Anonymous appeared to have added the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and Home Secretary Theresa May's website to its hit list.

According to a flurry of tweets sent out by the Anonymous Operations twitter account on Saturday night, all three targets were taken down, at least intermittently.

The group also called on followers to verify the status of the sites from their locations across the globe, with one claiming GCHQ had tried to evade attack by switching its site to a different IP address.

However, Rik Ferguson, director of security research and communications for EMEA at Trend Micro, said switching IP addresses would be insufficient protection against "even the most simplistic of DDoS."

"DDoS is defeated by bandwidth. You need to have more than your attacker and this can be accomplished in a number of ways," he told IT Pro.

"You can buy bigger pipes and build bigger server farms locally, you can block incoming requests based on geography [or you can] use the power of the cloud...like Google, Amazon, IBM or Rackspace [to] hide behind someone else's bandwidth."

Taking back Sunday

Anonymous members are also understood to have attempted follow-up attacks on all three targets yesterday afternoon.

However, a Home Office spokesperson told IT Pro earlier today the attacks had not affected its IT systems or services.

"The Government line on this is that our services and systems were unharmed across all sites," he said.

This view was backed by Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at security vendor Sophos, who said he saw little evidence of major disruption to Government sites over the weekend.

Hacktivists bear a grudge and will not give up easily

Even so, he doubts this will be enough to discourage Anonymous from pursuing its Saturday night activities.

"I don't think we're likely to see Anonymous getting bored of DDoS attacks, [because] they're very little effort to organise and an easy way for them to get headlines, even if the "best result" (from Anonymous's viewpoint) achieves little more than a bloodied nose," he told IT Pro.

This was a view shared by Bob Tarzey, service director at analyst Quocirca. "In an arms race criminals may well give up and find easier targets, but hacktivists are different because they bear a grudge and will not give up so easily.

"Once victims know they are a target, they need keep up the vigilance [and have] advanced cyber-intelligence capabilities, as well as point security products [in place]," he added.

Hacking group Anonymous has followed up its threat to stage weekly attacks against the Government by taking the Home Office website offline.

The group used social networking sites Twitter and Tumblr to declare the launch of a Distributed Denial-Of-Service (DDoS) attack against the Home Office website on Saturday night.

In a series of tweets, published by the Anonymous Operations account, the group said the attack was in protest at the extradition of UK citizens to stand trial in the US.

According to a report on the BBC News site, the attack resulted in the site becoming inaccessible for several hours.

The Saturday night attack followed an earlier tweet by the group on 4 April, which read: "Expect a DDoS every Saturday on the UK Government sites."

Expect a DDoS every Saturday on the UK Government sites.

Graham Gluley, senior technology consultant at security vendor Sophos, said the decision to stage attacks at weekends is unlikely to have been a coincidence.

"My guess is that [a weekend attack] might make life more difficult for those responsible for maintaining the uptime of such sites," Cluley told IT Pro. "Fewer staff are likely to be at work, for instance, and it might be trickier to call in other expertise."

Moreover, he also advised the Government to be prepared for attacks from a range of sources, not just Anonymous.

"Just because Anonymous have made threats doesn't necessarily mean that anything will occur or that attacks will be successful," he explained.

"Nevertheless, departments which feel they may be in the firing line will no doubt be consulting with those who manage their site's infrastructure and internet traffic to see what they can do to assist during times of high traffic," he concluded.

Jeremy Nicholls, business development director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at DDoS protection vendor Arbor Networks, said the Home Office take down should raise awareness of how susceptible all firms are to attack.

"Any business operating online can become a target, because of who they are, what they sell or who they partner with," explained Nicholls.

"Furthermore, the explosion of inexpensive and readily-accessible attack tools [allows] anyone to carry out DDoS attacks. This has profound implications for the threat landscape, risk profile, network architecture and security deployments of internet-connected organisations."

At the time of writing IT Pro was awaiting an updated response from the Home Office about Saturday night's attacks and the threat the group poses to other Government sites.

SourceForge prides itself on its lack of judgement on the internet, but even it has drawn the line with the operating system, reportedly launched by hacktivist group Anonymous.

Yesterday, the site began hosting the file for users to download the Linux-based OS, which some claimed to be the work of Anonymous, designed to help get around security protections and increase the capabilities of its hacker followers.

Today has seen SourceForge remove the file and release a statement claiming it now believes it is a security risk.

"We looked at the project and decided that although the name of the project was misleading (we see no evidence that it is connected with Anonymous) it appeared, on initial glance, to be a security-related operating system, with, perhaps, an attack-oriented emphasis," read a blog post from the website's team.

"However, as the day progressed, various security experts have had a chance to take a look at what's really in this distribution, and verify that it is indeed a security risk, and not merely a distribution of security-related utilities, as the project page implies."

The blog added: "We have therefore decided to take this download offline and suspend this project until we have more information that might lead us to think differently. We'll be in touch with the project admin, and let you know if and when we find out anything to contrary, but for now, that's what we're doing."

Despite SourceForge's decision, which wasn't taken lightly due to its "struggle with taking a project offline," the jury is still out on whether the OS is a risk to users downloading it.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, told IT Pro yesterday that users should be wary of the software, claiming it might even be used by Federal authorities to track user activity.

However, Rik Ferguson, director of security research for Trend Micro, told us today he saw little threat from the OS.

"I haven't seen any evidence of malicious activity within the OS yet," he said. "It's just basically a (very) poor-man's Backtrack."

SourceForge is sticking by its decision for now, but has said it will keep an eye on the OS in case it becomes viable to distribute again.

"We always struggle with taking a project offline, even one that seems, on the face of it, to need it," added the blog. "The reason for this is that we have been entrusted with thousands of projects, by thousands of developers, and we are always at risk of making a judgement about a project that looks malicious, and isn't."

"We don't want to forfeit the trust of the developer community in exchange for the trust of the user community, or vice versa. It's a tightrope we must walk every time we encounter a project that seems a little suspicious."

SourceForge concluded: "We believe that this is the right decision in this case, but will continue to dig into it, to ensure that we've gone the right direction."

The official Vatican website is back online, after an Anonymous hit took it down yesterday evening.

A statement on the Italian Anonymous website, the group said it was targeting the Vatican as it blamed the Catholic Church for egregious acts, including the burning of heretics during the Inquisition.

"Anonymous has now decided to lay siege to your site in response to the doctrines, liturgies and the precepts absurd and anachronistic that your organization is for profit (Roman Apostolic Church) propagates and spreads worldwide," the message read.

This is NOT intended to attack the true Christian religion and the faithful around the world.

"You have burned books of immense historical and literary value... have denied universally deemed valid or plausible theories.

"This is NOT intended to attack the true Christian religion and the faithful around the world."

The attack came during a busy week for Anonymous, one which saw related group LulzSec seriously hurt by charges brought by the FBI.

It was also reported that one of the chief leaders of LulzSec, known as Sabu, was working with the FBI to uncover other members of the hacktivist group.

UK residents Ryan Ackroyd and Jake Davis were two of the five men charged.

The AntiSec movement then defaced some Panda Security sites, leaving a message aimed both at Sabu, revealed to be a male named Hector Xavier Monsegur, and at the anti-virus vendor.

The AntiSec movement has claimed a number of hits on sites running Panda Security content, defacing them with a message for Sabu, who was outed as an alleged FBI informant yesterday.

The message said "Sabu snitched on us," adding "we can't imagine how it feels having to look in the mirror each morning and see there the guy who shopped their friends to the police."

AntiSec also had some comments for Panda Security, claiming the company helped jail 25 Anonymous members and was trying to snare others by using the hacktivist group's IRC channels.

The attack did not breach Panda Security's internal network and neither source code, update servers nor customer data was accessed.

"Yep, we know about you. How does it feel being the spied one," the message read.

Panda confirmed a number of its sites were hit, but not the official pandasecurity.com or cloudantivirus.com domains. The defacements came as a result of a webserver hosted outside of the Panda Security internal network being compromised.

"This server was only used for marketing campaigns and to host some of the company's blogs," a company spokesperson said.

"The attack did not breach Panda Security's internal network and neither source code, update servers nor customer data was accessed. The only information accessed was related to marketing campaigns such as landing pages and some obsolete credentials, including supposed credentials for employees that have not been working at Panda for over five years.

"We continue investigating the cause of the intrusion and will provide more details as soon as they become available."

Panda said concerned customers could contact the firm via communication@pandasecurity.com.

Yesterday saw the FBI charge five men in relation to an investigation into different hacktivist groups.

Two of the men charged were from the UK - Ryan Ackroyd and Jake Davis. Akroyd and Davis were interviewed by London's Met police last year in relation to LulzSec attacks, it is believed.

The FBI also revealed Monsegur pleaded guilty on 15 August 2011 in US District Court to 12 counts of various computer hacking conspiracies and other crimes.

Monsegur, who Fox News claimed yesterday had been recruited by the FBI as an informant after he was arrested, faces a maximum sentence of 124 years and six months in prison.

The man alleged to be the leader of LulzSec has reportedly been working with law enforcement, helping them track and charge various people suspected of being top-ranking members of the hacktivist group.

Sources told Fox News that the person ostensibly leading LulzSec, otherwise known as Sabu, was unmasked by the FBI last June but became a cooperating witness to help track down others.

Today five have been charged, with three arrested, according to the report, which claimed two of those charged were from Great Britain, whilst another two were from Ireland.

We're chopping off the head of LulzSec.

An indictment is expected to be unsealed today, with a US man also charged.

"This is devastating to the organisation," an FBI official said. "We're chopping off the head of LulzSec."

Arrest confusion?

However, there is confusion over who has been arrested and who has been charged. Ireland's national police service An Garda Sochna told IT Pro one person had been arrested this morning in relation to the investigation and had not yet been charged.

That person can remain in custody for 24 hours and will then be released unless charges are made, a spokesperson said. There was no information on a second man being charged.

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) said no arrests had been made today relating to LulzSec, but one male was being charged. This would apparently contradict the Fox News report, which said two of the men were from London and two from Ireland.

The male charged was a 17-year-old from South London, who has been charged with "two counts of conspiracy to do an unauthorised act with intent to impair or with recklessness impairing of an operation of a computer or computers." He will appear at West London Youth Court on 13 March on bail.

The second is a 25-year-old man, who was arrested in September last year and is due back on bail today. The Met will subsequently make a decision on whether to charge him.

The real Sabu

Fox News identified Sabu as Hector Xavier Monsegur, claiming he admitted to 12 hacking-related charges last year before agreeing to help law enforcement.

An indictment has revealed Monsegur was accused of helping carry out various significant hacks on organisations such as Sony, Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and numerous Governments in the name of Anonymous and LulzSec.

Fox was also a target, the indictment showed.

Just yesterday, Sabu took to his Twitter account to criticise law enforcement.

"The feds at this moment are scouring our lives without warrants. Without judges approval. This needs to change," he said, under his Twitter handle @anonymousSabu.

"The federal government is run by a bunch of [EXPLETIVE DELETIVE] cowards. Don't give in to these people. Fight back. Stay strong," another tweet read.

Believed to be an offshoot of fellow hacktivist group Anonymous, LulzSec has been fairly quiet this year after a busy 2011, which saw it hit numerous big-name organisations.

Members of the group were suspected of attacks on Sony, and claimed hits on News International, Nintendo and the CIA, amongst others.

July saw another male suspected of being a key figure in LulzSec, known as Topiary, captured by police during raids on the Shetland Isles.

One of the men arrested this week was suspected of being behind the hit on US security company Stratfor, which saw millions of emails leaked online. However, that man was allegedly a member of Anonymous, not Lulzsec, and has been charged in a separate indictment.

End of LulzSec?

Some have suggested the end is now nigh for LulzSec, if Sabu has been outed.

Rik Ferguson, director of security research and communication, told IT Pro it "certainly looks like the end game for the splinter group known as LulzSec."

"It should certainly be expected that law enforcement have gathered all evidence they feel is necessary to proceed effectively against those individuals they are currently seeking to arrest," Ferguson added.

As for Anonymous, Ferguson noted how different it was from LulzSec and so would not be as damaged by today's reports.

"Anonymous is a very different organisation to LulzSec and other more closely linked groups," he said.

"Anyone can and does act in the name of Anonymous and their activities do not require individual hacker publicity or disclosure of personally identifiable details. The very fact that Sabu became the 'celebrity' he was illustrates the real difference between LulzSec and Anonymous. LulzSec may be finished, but it would be premature to say the same about Anonymous."

UPDATE The FBI has now named the five people it has charged: Ryan Ackroyd, Jake Davis, Darren Martyn, Donncha O'Cearrbhall and Jeremy Hammond.

Hammond was arrested on suspicion of carrying out the hit on Stratfor as part of the AntiSec movement.

The FBI revealed Monsegur pleaded guilty on August 15, 2011 in U.S. District Court to a 12-count information charging him with computer hacking conspiracies and other crimes.

Akroyd and Davis were interviewed by London's Met police last year in relation to LulzSec attacks, it is believed.

Even though the botnet behind the DNSChanger Trojan was dismantled towards the end of last year, a huge number of enterprises appear to still be infected.

So what's the problem if the power behind the Trojan has been hauled off to jail? Well how about the small matter of the FBI apparently insisting it will seek to disconnect any computer still found to be infected with DNSChanger on 8 March?

DNSChanger was one of the most malicious of Trojans to hit businesses last year, infecting around 4 million computers globally. It worked by changing the host system's Domain Name Server (DNS) settings to point them at assorted advertising and often malicious sites via the now dismantled botnet.It also made changes to ensure that infected systems could no longer access security vendor sites in order to get help with removal of the thing.

DNSChanger was one of the most malicious of Trojans to hit businesses last year.

It was a typically clever bit of malware and one that proved to be pretty successful, allegedly netting the Estonian gang behind it upwards of 8 million in profit. It did all of this by simply changing the NameServer Registry key value to a custom IP address upon installation of the malicious executable.

But, I have to ask on your behalf once again, why does any of this actually matter now the command and control botnet that was handling the DNS diversions has been dismantled and no longer exists, so that those infected computers cannot be pointed towards the nefarious sites? That's where the FBI comes in.

The botnet itself was uncovered after a co-ordinated attack on the malware infrastructure. Law enforcement authorities and service providers effectively reverse engineered the botnet and alerted customers whose machines were infected with the Trojan.

Half of all Fortune 500 companies are still infected.

Now this is where it gets interesting and a little perturbing: the FBI managed to secure a court order which enabled it to replace the DNS heart of the Trojan, so that all traffic would flow through a surrogate DNS server instead. The court order in question allows the FBI to maintain this surrogate DNS service until 8 March. After which, and I'm guessing you are ahead of me here, any business whose computers are still infected with the Trojan, and therefore still using this surrogate DNS service, will find themselves removed from the internet entirely and dumped into 404-ville.

Which could, if the numbers I have seen are to be believed, lead to an awful lot of companies suddenly and catastrophically being denied access to the internet. Within the US alone, and remember that DNSChanger was a global infection spreading across more than 100 countries, half of all Fortune 500 companies are still infected and half of all major government agencies likewise carry at least one infected machine.

The DNSChanger Working Group, established to help co-ordinate remediation of the Trojan infection, is known to be considering applying for an extension to the court deadline to relieve the likely impact otherwise, given the high number of infections still found to be active. But it could all be something of a pointless exercise. After all, the Conficker Working Group had a similar remit and some three years after it was founded there are still thought to be around three million systems still infected with the Conficker Worm.

It would be a good thing if the situation frightened those enterprises who have not bothered to properly scan for and remove any DNSChanger infections to implement a proper security strategy. If you want to be sure you are not one of them, then perhaps you should contact your security vendor for advice as to how to check your network for evidence of infection.

One cannot help but marvel at the irony of the timing of all this though, what with Anonymous having made a declaration that it would launch a DDoS attack against DNS root servers, and effectively take down the internet, on 30 March. Now it looks like, for a large number of businesses anyway, that the FBI may just beat them to it.

The Police Central e-crime Unit (PCeU) has a vision "to contribute, alongside national and international partners, towards the provision of a safer and more secure cyber environment."

How embarrassed must the powers that be at the PCeU felt after it became clear a conference call between itself and one of its international partners, the FBI, had been hacked? Worse yet, that conference call concerned how to deal with hackers, notably the Anonymous collective which was responsible for hacking the call itself and then making a recording of it available for anyone to listen to via YouTube.

The big question here is how much did the call tell us about what police know about cyber crime? Unfortunately, it hinted at a certain ineptitude inside authorities tasked with stopping hackers like Anonymous.

Such comments don't inspire much confidence that law enforcement is really taking some of this very seriously.

You can pretty much ignore the first five minutes or so of the conversation which seems to be just that, a conversational chat. But from there on we get into the nitty gritty of talking about specific hackers and operations, which is where it gets both interesting and revealing.

When a hacker is mentioned who, amongst other things, claims to be responsible for the Steam hack, the British police officer appears to be totally unaware of what Steam actually is. No big deal you might think. After all, not everyone is a gamer and might not have an interest in one of the biggest multiplayer games distribution channels online. But when that site was widely reported as having been hacked towards the end of last year, you might think it would have registered with the law enforcement chaps tasked with catching the people responsible for such crimes.

Then there is the relatively dismissive attitude towards the hackers being discussed during the conference call. One is described as "another juvenile/wannabe" and "a smack from mum or dad" might have been behind one of the hacker's motives. Another teenage suspect is described as an attention seeking idiot. Such comments don't inspire much confidence that law enforcement is really taking some of this very seriously.

Didn't anyone think to secure that conference call a bit more thoroughly? It seems the access details for the dial-in conference call were emailed to relevant officials by way of an e-invite - an invite that somehow got forwarded to a non-Government account which had been compromised, allowing Anonymous to not only see the invite but secretly participate in the call as a silent listener.

That knowledge of the dial-in number and, presumably a login and password circulated in the same invitation mail, was all that was required as authentication is, frankly, remarkable. Especially as that email was, as I understand it, sent to more than 40 law enforcement officers in the US and across Europe.

But it gets even worse when you realise that each participant was given the same login code, so that anyone reading the email would be able to join the call. I would have thought the people on the forefront of fighting the war against insecurity might consider unique codes for each participant.

I could understand it if the conference call was the kind that I get a zillion invites to and involve a marketing man in the US extolling the virtues of the latest mind-numbingly boring product. But no two-factor authentication, which would likely have stopped the hackers in their tracks, for a call between law enforcement agency officials? Really?

Symantec is telling IT departments to disable its remote access software solution pcAnywhere after a source code leak meant the product faced an "increased security risk."

The security giant said it was reaching out to customers to warn them of additional dangers, after it admitted source code relating to various products was stolen.

Hacktivist group Anonymous had threatened to release Symantec source code earlier this month, leading the Norton provider to admit a breach in 2006 had compromised information.

Symantec recommends disabling the product until we release a final set of software updates.

Prior to today's revelation, Symantec had simply asked IT departments to ensure best practices with pcAnywhere use. The reviewed advice indicates the 2006 hack exposed more than initially thought.

"Symantec has taken an aggressive position to ensure pcAnywhere customers are protected. At this time, Symantec recommends disabling the product until we release a final set of software updates that resolve currently known vulnerability risks," a spokesperson said.

"For customers that require pcAnywhere for business critical purposes, it is recommended that customers understand the current risks, ensure pcAnywhere 12.5 is installed, apply all relevant patches as they are released, and follow general security best practices."

From the 2006 hack, affected products include old versions of Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Norton Internet Security, Norton SystemWorks (Norton Utilities and Norton GoBack), as well as pcAnywhere. Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) 11.0 and Symantec AntiVirus 10.2 also inherited a very small amount of exposed code.

Symantec has backtracked on how source code relating to its products was leaked, revealing its own network was hacked in 2006.

The revelation came after hacktivist group Anonymous claimed it was going to release the full source code of Symantec's flagship Norton anti-virus software.

The security giant said it believed the data acquired by hackers came after a hack in 2006, although it could not confirm to IT Pro how the break-in took place.

Symantec customers - including those running Norton products - should not be in any increased danger of cyber attacks.

Earlier this month, Symantec confirmed some source code relating to older enterprise products had been stolen. At the time, it claimed Norton products were unaffected and its own network had not been breached.

Hackers calling themselves The Lords of Dharmaraja threatened to publish the information online, saying they acquired the information from the Indian military.

From the 2006 hack, affected products include old versions of Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Norton Internet Security, Norton SystemWorks (Norton Utilities and Norton GoBack) and its remote access software solution pcAnywhere.

Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) 11.0 and Symantec AntiVirus 10.2 inherited a very small amount of exposed code, the company said. There are no indications customers data has been stolen, it added.

"Due to the age of the exposed source code, except as specifically noted below, Symantec customers - including those running Norton products - should not be in any increased danger of cyber attacks resulting from this incident," a spokesperson said.

"Customers of Symantec's pcAnywhere product may face a slightly increased security risk as a result of this exposure if they do not follow general best practices. Symantec is currently in the process of reaching out to our pcAnywhere customers to make them aware of the situation and to provide remediation steps to maintain the protection of their devices and information. Since 2006, Symantec has instituted a number of policies and procedures to prevent a similar incident from occurring."

Symantec said businesses do not need to take any additional steps to protect themselves as a result of the hack. The company recommended customers ensure their software is up to date.

For any IT departments still concerned about the source code leak, Symantec has set up an advice page here.

Symantec did not disclose the 2006 hack publicly at the time, meaning it has taken between five and six years for the breach for the security firm to reveal what happened, or that the company did not know source code had gone missing back then.

RSA was heavily criticised for not immediately publicly disclosing a breach last year, when information relating to its SecurID product was compromised.

Never let it be said that IT Pro is afraid to combine Japanese haiku with rhyming couplets.

Jobs may be gone

His words live on

MPs conspire

Microsoft throws more money onto the fire

Let's start a war, start a nuclear war!

Steve Jobs may no longer be with us, but his actions and words still cast a long shadow. Snippets of his upcoming authorised biography continue to leak out. Apparently Jobs thought Bill Gates was "unimaginative" and that Barack Obama is heading towards a one-term presidency.

Most interesting of all for the tech industry is his thoughts on Android that he wasn't interested in a financial settlement with Google but wanted the search company to stop using what he saw as stolen Apple ideas in Android. These comments only confirm what we here at IT Pro suspected all along and means the patent war between Apple and Android licensees will only get even more bitter than it is already.

With all these juicy tidbits leaking out, will there be any point in buying the actual book?

Yes Minister

There are plenty of short-sighted, knee jerk reactionaries in this world, but none more so than politicians. We have nothing but thinly-veiled disdain for proposals that would crack down on anonymous online comments.

There are plenty of obnoxious, spam comments online, but this is going too far. Apart from a supposedly business-friendly government imposing more work on ISPs. Imposing restrictions on online communication in an era where that same communication has emboldened corporate whistleblowers, exposed political corruption and helped foster an Arab Spring seems erroneous at best and hopelessly corrupt and self-interested at worst. Well done guys, you deserve a slow handclap. Good job.

Courting is a tricky game

Either Yahoo is even more desperate than we thought, or there's a rumour-mongering analyst out there with a quirky sense of humour. First there was the news that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was relieved Microsoft didn't acquire Yahoo at the height of the credit crunch. Now there are rumours Microsoft could be doing the slow dance of love again, by forming a consortium to buy out the troubled internet company.

We're not sure which would be the least worst corporate buyout partner for Yahoo. Microsoft, a company losing vast sums of money in the hope of gaining market share in online services, or AOL, another struggling internet company.

Bring back Carol Bartz we say. She may not have fared too well during her reign at Yahoo, but at least she could put together a foul mouthed tirade at the drop of a hat. We'd pay good money to see Bartz and Ballmer duke it out. The confrontation would be like asking a gaggle of chimps to write Shakespeare noisy, smelly and ultimately futile.

MPs have proposed plans to crack down on defamatory comments posted anonymously on the web.

In a response to the Government's draft Defamation Bill, a Joint Committee report recommended updates to the law to make website owners more active in monitoring comments, whilst protecting them if they act quickly to remove defamatory posts.

It is essential that the ability to post and publish anonymously online is protected and this report does not go far enough to explain how this can be done.

Under what the committee called a "new notice and take-down procedure," if a complaint is made about an anonymous post, it should be removed from the website immediately unless the author promptly identifies themselves after being requested to do so.

"If the internet service provider believes that there are significant reasons of public interest that justify publishing the unidentified materialfor example, if a whistle-blower is the sourceit should have the right to apply to a judge for an exemption from the take-down procedure and secure a "leave-up" order," the report read.

"We do not believe that the host or service provider should be liable for anonymous material provided it has complied with the above requirements."

Complaints about posts from identifiable contributors should be published alongside the relevant material.

What we think...

Anonymity is a huge problem for the internet. Whilst one could argue that attacking anonymity is a threat to freedom of speech, it is hard to argue against the point that freedom of speech should only be permitted for those who are willing to be identified.

If the information being posted is genuinely of worth to the general public, however, then it would be right in certain cases to permit that anonymity.

It is a tricky question for the web's regulators to answer. It will be difficult to find an outcome that upsets as few people as possible.

Tom Brewster, Senior Staff Writer

If sued for defamation because of that post and they have not published the complaint, website owners "can only rely on the standard defences available to a primary publisher."

Complainants would also be able to apply for a court order to have the post taken down. In that case, the post's author would be contacted as well and they would be able to make their arguments for why the comment should remain or be deleted.

The committee said identifying anonymous users by seeking a court order against the host or ISP would not be quick, cheap or guarantee a successful outcome.

"Specifically we expect, and wish to promote, a cultural shift towards a general recognition that unidentified postings are not to be treated as true, reliable or trustworthy," the Joint Committee report read.

"The desired outcome to be achieved - albeit not immediately - should be that they are ignored or not regarded as credible unless the author is willing to justify or defend what they have written by disclosing his or her identity."

Words of warning

Some have warned that the proposals would threaten the positive aspects of web anonymity.

"It is essential that the ability to post and publish anonymously online is protected and this report does not go far enough to explain how this can be done," Nick Pickles, director of the Big Brother Watch, told IT Pro.

"If people are posting defamatory material, publishers have a duty to remove that content. What is essential is that any take down process must follow due process and ensure that the law cannot be abused by larger parties to censor uncomfortable content - as is often the case under existing law."

A 23-year-old student, believed to be a member of hacktivist group LulzSec, has been arrested on suspicion of hacking the Sony Pictures website earlier this year.

The FBI confirmed the arrest yesterday of Cody Kretsinger, saying they believed he and co-conspirators had gained confidential data from Sony Pictures by carrying out an SQL injection attack.

Kretsinger faces a maximum sentence of 15 years prison if convicted.

LulzSec said it hacked Sony Pictures' servers in June, accessing more than one million customers' details.

The group published the names, birth dates, addresses, emails, phone numbers and passwords of thousands of who had entered contests promoted by Sony.

Hackers may not be as willing to trumpet their activitiesa major driver of hacktivism.

Aziz Maakaroun, managing partner of vulnerability management firm Outpost24 UK, said the fact students had allegedly managed to compromise Sony had "sent shockwaves across the world."

However, Maakaroun said the arrests would have beneficial consequences for law enforcement targeting hacktivists.

"This latest twist of events may shed further light on this particular saga and provide some much needed information on the workings and members of LulzSec," he added.

"The arrest should also serve as a warning signal to other cyber criminals and would-be hackers as to the severity with which breaches of security are seen."

Rob Rachwald, director of security for Imperva, agreed the arrest may have an impact on LulzSec's activities.

"Hackers may not be as willing to trumpet their activities - a major driver of hacktivism," Rachwald said in a blog post.

"Further, it may impede recruitment of new hackers who could now be a little more gun shy."

Rachwald suggested LulzSec and Anonymous have made mistakes in their operations, especially in leaving an "electronic trail" for law enforcement to use in tracking them down.

Meanwhile, Sony has chosen to stop PlayStation Network gamers filing class-action lawsuits against the company by updating its terms and conditions. It followed a string of hacks on the entertainment giant, which saw data on over 100 million users compromised.

A number of suspected LulzSec hackers have been arrested this year, including Topiary - a teenager from the Shetlands believed to be a major player in the group.

Read on for our thoughts on how much of an impact such arrests will really have.

A 22-year-old British student has been charged following police investigations into Anonymous attacks in January on big name sites including PayPal.

Hartlepool resident Peter David Gibson was charged with conspiracy to carry out an unauthorised act, "with intent to impair the operation of any computer or prevent or hinder access to any programme or data held in a computer or to impair the operation of any such programme or the reliability of such data."

Failure to comply with these demands will result in dramatically increased hostilities against authorities currently holding any members of Anonymous worldwide.

Gibson is due to appear on bail at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court on 7 September.

In July, an FBI-run operation led to the arrests of 20 individuals in the US, the UK and the Netherlands as part of an investigation into attacks on PayPal. It was believed a UK teenager was arrested on suspicion of involvement in Anonymous.

Anonymous recently started a campaign calling for people to ditch their PayPal accounts, taking a less illegal strategy in their protests.

Yesterday, Anonymous posted a message to law enforcement bodies, including the Metropolitan Police, calling for the release of people suspected of involvement in the hacktivist group.

It called for the release of Jake Davis, who was arrested in July. It is believed Davis is Topiary - a key figure of LulzSec.

"Failure to comply with these demands will result in dramatically increased hostilities against authorities currently holding any members of Anonymous worldwide," the message, from an Anonymous member known as Bree, on Pastebin read.

"You cannot arrest an idea, nor can you stop one as powerful as the one Anonymous, Anti-Sec, and LulzSec are championing. We are not afraid anymore."

Meanwhile, the Met's Police Central e-Crime Unit confirmed it had arrested a man in connection into malicious threats made to Louise Mensch MP via email and social networking sites.

A 61-year-old was arrested at an address in the Gloucester and remains in custody.

Mensch had publicly claimed Anonymous and LulzSec had sent threats against her children. "Had some morons from Anonymous/Lulzsec threaten my children via email," the Conservative MP tweeted.

Anonymous subsequently denied its involvement.

Hacktivist group Anonymous is continuing with its AntiSec campaign, claiming to have swiped 1GB of data from a US Government contractor.

Anonymous said it had posted 1GB of private emails and documents from Vanguard Defense Industries (VDI), which supplies drones to the US military.

"This leak contains internal meeting notes and contracts, schematics, non-disclosure agreements, personal information about other VDI employees, and several dozen counter-terrorism' documents classified as law enforcement sensitive' and for official use only,'" Anonymous said.

"We are doing this not only to cause embarrassment and disruption to Vanguard Defense Industries, but to send a strong message to the hacker community. White hat sellouts, law enforcement collaborators, and military contractors beware: we're coming for your mail spools, bash history files, and confidential documents."

Anonymous paid special attention to senior vice president of VDI Richard Garcia, claiming the stolen emails were his. The hacktivist group said Garcia had not changed passwords since the release of the data.

We are doing this not only to cause embarrassment and disruption to Vanguard Defense Industries, but to send a strong message to the hacker community.

"Within the booty you may find lots of shiny things as we did not have time to follow up on all the data," Anonymous added.

"Safe to say, that despite previous disclosure in the media, Mr Garcia did not bother to change any of his many many passwords found in his spool at the time of this release."

Anonymous and loosely affiliated group LulzSec have gone after US defence contractors in earnest as part of their AntiSec activities.

In the past six months, Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen Hamilton and Mantech International have all been targeted.

Last year, a battle between Anonymous and HBGary saw the latter back out of the RSA security conference, claiming the hacktivist group had made threats at its trade show booth.

Hackers have published what is believed to be private information of police officers after moves to stifle protests in San Francisco.

Officers working for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (Bart) underground transport agency were targeted after mobile phone services were cut off at stations to prevent protests.

Data of 102 officers was published online after a breach of the Bart Police Officers Association the union representing the officers. Information included home addresses, email addresses and passwords for the union's site.

The moves came after anger over Bart police shooting a homeless man, who was killed after allegedly threatening officers with a knife. Protests were subsequently planned.

The leak today of BART officer data could be the work sanctioned by those who truly support anonymous, or agent provocateurs.

Earlier this week, hacktivist group Anonymous said it had taken down Bart's marketing website, myBart.org.

Yet there is confusion over who was responsible for leaking the data of the Bart police. A tweet from AnonyOps indicated Anonymous may not have been involved.

"The leak today of BART officer data could be the work sanctioned by those who truly support anonymous, or agent provocateurs. Stay skeptical," it read.

"FYI, No one claimed responsibility for the hack. Some random joe joined a channel and released the data to the press," another AnonyOps tweet read.

A Pastebin post from the owner of the AnonyOps Twitter feed sought to explain their stance further.

"The mainstream media needs to understand that Anonymous isn't unanimous. I've yet to see wide scale reporting make this distinction," the post read.

"A destructive minority is getting a majority of the press, while those of us who toil in the shadow doing good work for people at home and abroad go unthanked."

As noted by this website before, Anonymous could suffer due to its structure allowing anyone to claim they are carrying out activities in the hacktivist group's name.

The FBI is now investigating the hack, whilst the Federal Communications Commission is reportedly looking into whether Bart's decision to disable mobile services was legal.

Operation Anti-Security had a busy weekend, releasing over 7GB of data stolen from 76 US law enforcement websites in 11 states.

The documents, containing personal information including credit card details, email addresses, social security numbers and informant data, were taken from sites mostly maintained by rural county sheriffs and hosted by a single firm.

The web site of the Arkansas-based hosting firm, Brooks-Jeffrey Marketing, which also maintained the domain names of many of the hacked web sites, was also down late Sunday evening.

The Anti-Sec campaign, initiated in June by the two prolific hacktivist groups Anonymous and LulzSec, claimed it first hacked the police sites a week ago.

In a statement, the Anonymous group said it hoped that this largest Anti-Sec data dump to date would reveal corruption and lead to criminal charges against several law officers.

It added: "We hopeit will also disrupt and sabotage their ability to communicate and terrorise communities."

Its statement has led to interpretations of the hack and data dump as retaliation for the ongoing police crackdown on its members and networks.

The international criminal investigation has already led to a number of arrests in the US and Europe, including nine in the UK.

Alleged LulzSec member known as "Topiary," Jake Davis, was released on bail last week after facing five charges related to computer hacking in Westminster Magistrate's court.

Elsewhere over the weekend, Anti-Sec hacktivists also reportedly released data on the Brazilian federal police and personal details on 45,000 Ecuadorian local police officers.

Security firm Sophos said the official website of the Syrian Ministry of Defence has also been defaced and the Minister of the Interior and Justice of Colombia's Twitter account was hacked, according to local news reports.

A Shetland teenager suspected of being involved in hacktivist group LulzSec has been charged for a variety of cyber crime offences.

Jake Davis, 18, was charged on five counts, one of them being a conspiracy to carry out a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) website.

SOCA was forced to take its website offline in June. LulzSec claimed to have hit the site with a DDoS strike.

The teen was arrested last week, as police said they had taken Davis in under suspicion of being a spokesperson for LulzSec, known as Topiary.

Davis will appear in custody at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court today.

The arrest came as part of a Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) investigation.

Another teenager, 19 year old Ryan Cleary, was arrested and charged earlier this year for five offences, including the strike on SOCA.

In July, a coordinated FBI investigation into hacktivist activities led to 21 arrests in the US, the UK and the Netherlands. A 16 year old male in London was detained.

Some experts believe arrests will do little to harm the hacktivists' activity. In recent weeks, Anonymous and LulzSec have hit a variety of organisations, including NATO and News International.

Taking a different tack, Anonymous began calling for people to ditch their PayPal accounts last week. Despite Anonymous claiming the campaign had seen thousands leave PayPal, the eBay subsidiary said it hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary.

"We haven't seen any changes to our normal operations (including account opening and closing)," a spokesperson said.

UPDATED: Davis, who appeared at court earlier today, has been released on bail and will be staying at his mother's in Spalding, Lincolnshire.

The teenager has been banned from the internet and told to wear a tag to keep him in check with a 10pm to 7am curfew.

Meanwhile, Anonymous has started up a 'Free Topiary' campaign, posting pictures on Twitter of the alleged LulzSec hacker coming out of court.

ANALYSIS One of the supposed key figures of LulzSec may have been captured by police during raids on the Shetland Isles, but it won't affect hacktivists too much.

Despite what authorities might believe, taking down any hacktivist group completely is close to impossible.

Look at the number of arrests made this year in relation to either Anonymous or LulzSec crackdowns. It's over 50. Yet have they made any impact?

Looking at recent events, the answer appears to be categorically no.' In the last month alone, NATO, News International, PayPal and Pfizer have all felt the wrath of hacktivists in differing ways.

Here's five reasons why the likes of Anonymous, LulzSec and new kids on the block The Script Kiddies, won't be stopped anytime soon.

1. Arrests won't do anything

Hackers are notoriously hard to catch. For that reason alone, hacktivists will not easily be defeated.

"By definition, hacking is a covert activity. So trying to quantify the activities of this or that group is difficult," David Emm, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, told IT Pro.

"How effective these arrests may be is dependent on several factors - how big the group is, whether it's just one group and, if it is, how cohesive it is, the outcome of the arrests."

With hacktivists, arrests look likely to do little. Anonymous is undoubtedly a complex, large organisation, spread across many nations, making it hugely difficult track and ensuring investigations between countries are tricky to organise.

Furthermore, the fact Anonymous is so disparate, with no real head to be cut off, means it can't be crushed with arrests of supposedly high-profile members. Although there are members who carry greater weight than others, there is no definitive leader.

What's more, anyone can pick up the reins once one of the more senior members is taken in for questioning.

The structure of Anonymous may look chaotic, but this anarchy, this lack of a formal hierarchy gives it power.

2. Strong morals

It is clear Anonymous et al are in this mainly for political means. They want to bring down public and private organisations they view as corrupt.

If you have a purpose, of course, you have a strength. The hacktivists can take heart in this truism. Despite their disparate nature noted before, their shared values and targets give them direction. This translates into highly focused attacks.

This was crystallised in Anonymous' support of WikiLeaks. Since dropping support for financial aid to Julian Assange's organisation, financial firms like MasterCard and PayPal have been on the wrong end of attacks by hacking collective.

But of course, there is a paradox at the heart of the hacktivists. They claim to be carrying out their attacks for the people,' but they will happily cripple companies who have perfectly moralistic employees working for them.

"Many of the attacks attributed to these organisations have caused trouble to ordinary people. As much as people may disagree with the digital rights attitudes of many companies, they may still be using their services and be hit by a DDoS against them," said Mika Jalava, CTO at Stonesoft.

The change in tack to a more peaceful form of protest, as seen with this week's campaign calling on people to ditch PayPal accounts, might be a reaction to this. But it won't stop the illegal attacks.

The fact is, hacktivists need the power of DDoS to remain a threat and they will hold onto it. This will help them stay alive for some time to come.

4. People power?

Hacktivists can also claim to have the backing of many non-hackers, something money-seeking cyber criminals don't have. This makes Anonymous and Co different, it gives them a romantic edge.

As this article is itself ironically highlighting, media organisations love to report on hacktivists. They are something different, something exciting almost. Not run of the mill crooks.

In turn, this supplies them with a more prominent platform to espouse their views and therefore influence.

They're not so bad at doing their own PR either, as recently shown in the targeting of The Sun during the phone hacking scandal.

"Possibly they're being a little bolder than they have been recently, targeting the Murdoch empire because their target has attracted more anger than they have, though I think it's far from a foregone conclusion that they have as much data as they've claimed," said David Harley, senior research fellow at ESET.

"That could have been a ploy to appear more responsible' and deflect heat. Or simply to get more PR."

5. Anyone can be a target

The sheer range of organisations targeted by Anonymous and LulzSec has indicated they have no qualms about hitting anyone they feel like. Government bodies, financial institutions, news corporations - any company could be a target.

Anonymous' crosshairs could find their way onto any business, public or private.

So the final message is simply get yourself protected. Make sure your company can take the hit of a DDoS, or a more sophisticated strike, and educate workers on the dangers of targeted attacks. Not courting the attention of these hacking collectives would also be wise...

Hacktivist groups Anonymous and LulzSec have taken a different tack in their fight against PayPal by simply encouraging people to ditch their accounts.

In the past, the groups have fought their enemies with web attacks, namely distributed denial of service (DDoS) strikes, which are illegal in many countries.

If pace keeps up, over 9,000 PayPal accounts will be closed in the next week.

Now, however, the related groups have come together to tell people to finish with PayPal in response to FBI arrests of individuals suspected of involvement in cyber strikes on the eBay subsidiary.

Last week, an FBI-run operation led to the arrests of 20 individuals in the US, the UK and the Netherlands as part of an investigation into attacks on PayPal. It was believed a UK teenager was arrested on suspicion of involvement in Anonymous.

Anonymous' and LulzSec's actions were also made in retaliation to PayPal not accepting donations for WikiLeaks.

"We encourage anyone using PayPal to immediately close their accounts and consider an alternative," a post on Pastebin.com read.

"Join us in our latest operation against PayPal - tweet pictures of your account closure, tell us on IRC, spread the word. Anonymous has become a powerful channel of information, and unlike the governments of the world, we are here to fight for you."

Anonymous has already claimed success in its campaign, using a Twitter feed to promote the campaign.

"If pace keeps up, over 9,000 PayPal accounts will be closed in the next week," the group said.

It claimed a few hundred had been closed by 08.32 GMT today.

At the time of publication, PayPal had not confirmed any figures on account closures or responded to today's moves by Anonymous and LulzSec.

There was an indication the hacktivist groups would not stick to non-attack methods of protest, with Anonymous warning this was "just the beginning."

"We cannot only do more than DDoS we can do less than DDoS and both methods will cause you lots of headaches in the future. Expect us," the group added.

Anonymous has struck again, claiming a hit on an Italian police body, in a move thought to be in retaliation for arrests of members of the hacktivist group.

The hacktivist collective attacked the CNAIPIC - il Centro Nazionale Anticrimine Informatico per la Protezione delle Infrastrutture Critiche - the body running Italy's critical IT infrastructure.

"We decided to leak everything they got since they were established as a full scale cyber taskforce named CNAIPIC," read a note from Anonymous, accompanying a release on Pastebin.com.

A post on an Anonymous Twitter feed with the handle @anonesc appeared to confirm the hack, although the owner of that microblog absolved himself or herself of responsibility.

"Received from an #Anonymous #AntiSec (haha) source," the tweet read.

"AntiSec strikes at Italy Government. Silent no more," a post from AnonymousIRC read.

David Harley, senior research fellow at ESET UK, said the UK Government should be wary of attacks from the likes of Anonymous too.

"The British Government should always be concerned about the security of its websites," Harley said.

"Even if Anonymous or its cronies aren't planning a revenge attack (and they may well be), someone is always looking for access to interesting' sites: the new wave of hacktivists and for-the-giggles attackers are going to look for sites with maximum potential for notoriety/PR/bragging rights."

A little chat with The Script Kiddies

The past week has seen a host of hacktivist efforts. One group calling itself The Script Kiddies claimed a compromise of Pfizer's Facebook page.

Over the weekend it claimed to have stolen data from retailing giant Walmart and posted it online. Walmart had not confirmed any attack at the time of publication.

"Currently our aim is to assist the #AntiSec movement, we also aim to punish corrupt companies within the United States," The Script Kiddies told IT Pro over Twitter.

"We haven't mentioned our hacking methods. But unlike some journalists have claimed, we do not simply guess passwords."

The group said almost all of its members had been part of Anonymous or are currently members.

"We've helped them with everything from HB Gary to Operation Payback," the hacktivist collective added.

We can't remember a week when Steve Jobs' firm wasn't in the headlines, but the past few days have been so full of Apple we feel as disorientated as a West Country farmer who's injected himself with Old Scrumpy.

Amidst reports of fake Apple Stores popping up in China (are the stories true? Are they just legitimate resellers? Does anyone really care that much?), the iPhone creator has had a hugely busy week, as the fruity firm unleashed its Lion upon the world. Will the OS get decent business adoption though?

The company also produced some startling results, beating everyone's expectations (again) with iPhone sales soaring (again).

Nokia must be looking a little rouge and not just because of all the sauna time the Finnish firm is known for. It posted fairly dire results, even worse than analysts had predicted.

New buddy Microsoft can keep smiling though just about. The company reported some positive results, with servers and Office producing a record quarter for the Redmond giant. Of course, its online services unit continued to give the world the finest example of how to leak money up the wall. The unit has now lost almost $6.5 billion in the last three fiscal years.

The spy who lagged me

Elsewhere, our readers have been particularly interested in the Government's decision to share secret documents over the cloud. What about lag? What about security? Why is everyone in a Huddle?!

Talking of secret documents, Anonymous was on the war path again this week, stealing and then posting files it claimed contained restricted NATO data. Hacktivists also hit Pfizer's Facebook page and The Sun newspaper.

Apparently something is going down over at News International that has piqued their interest. Watch this space

Pfizer, the biggest research-based pharmaceutical company in the world, had its Facebook page hacked this week.

The firm was not forthcoming on how the hack took place but a group known as the Script Kiddies has taken credit for the hit.

"We have been working with Facebook to understand what happened so we can guard against it in the future," Pfizer said on its recovered Facebook page.

"Thank you for your patience while our page has been down, and we are pleased to be sharing our news with you once more."

Security blunders by PR companies or contractors can quickly become the stuff of legend.

A screen grab posted on the Script Kiddies Twitter page showed the hack formed part of the AntiSec campaign led by hacktivist groups Anonymous and LulzSec.

A note left on the Facebook page read: "The guy in charge of this Facebook. Hint for next time: protect this company with a LITTLE better security. One Google search and I'm in."

A Twitter post from the Script Kiddies said: "So apparently, the articles are all claiming the security breach on Pfizer's page was Facebook's fault? No... thank Pfizer and Pfizer only."

The group said it hacked the Facebook account for moral reasons.

Sophos' Paul Ducklin suggested the hackers got in by simply guessing the password of someone at Pfizer's PR company who had access to the Facebook page.

"Initiating, noticing, receiving, sifting and replying to online interactions swiftly is what a modern PR company is supposed to be good at," he said in a blog post.

"But if you do this, you don't just need to trust your flacks to be creative communicators. You need to trust them to be at least as good at computer security as you are... Security blunders by PR companies or contractors can quickly become the stuff of legend."

The AntiSec campaign has claimed attacks on mainly Government bodies, but evidently private organisations are under threat also.

Hacktivists LulzSec and Anonymous have been busy this week, claiming hits on The Sun newspaper and NATO.

Anonymous claimed to have stolen around 1GB of data from NATO today, but has not gone into detail about how it did so or what the data contained.

The group boasted about a successful hit on NATO via its Twitter feed, with one post containing a link to a supposedly "Restricted PDF." Another link to what Anonymous claimed was a separate NATO document was posted too.

"We have lots of restricted material. With some simple injection. In the next days, wait for interesting data," the group tweeted.

"We are sitting on about one Gigabyte of data from NATO now, most of which we cannot publish as it would be irresponsible."

Reports have indicated NATO is looking into any possible intrusion by Anonymous.

The hacktivist group is currently embroiled in the News International hacking scandal, claiming it has a host of emails which it may release.

However, a Twitter post today indicated the group may not release the information acquired during a hit on The Sun newspaper earlier this week.

"We think, actually we may not release emails from The Sun, simply because it may compromise the court case," Anonymous said.

Loosely affiliated group LulzSec said it was working with media organisations on what to do with some News of the World emails.

"We're currently working with certain media outlets who have been granted exclusive access to some of the News of the World emails we have," it tweeted.

FBI warning

Anonymous casts its net far and wide, though. Today it also posted a joint statement online with LulzSec, directing some derogatory comments at the FBI.

The statement reiterated the groups' stance against corrupt organisations, claiming it would hit unethical bodies with "all the methods" it had at its disposal.

The post came after an FBI led operation led to 20 arrests this week in the US, UK and the Netherlands. Most of the arrests were part of investigations into Anonymous activities.

"We are not scared anymore. Your threats to arrest us are meaningless to us as you cannot arrest an idea," the joint letter read.

"Any attempt to do so will make your citizens more angry until they will roar in one gigantic choir. It is our mission to help these people and there is nothing - absolutely nothing - you can possibly do to make us stop."

A 16 year old male has been arrested in the UK on suspicion of breaching the Computer Misuse Act 1990, as the FBI confirmed arrests as part of investigations into attacks on PayPal.

It is believed the teenager was apprehended in suspicion of being part of Anonymous. He remains in custody, the Metropolitan Police confirmed.

The FBI said 16 people had been detained for alleged hacking offences, 14 suspected of involvement in attacks on PayPal.

Anonymous claimed responsibility for a distributed denial of service (DDoS) hit on PayPal last year, saying it attacked the payments firm due to its withdrawal of support for WikiLeaks. Anonymous said the attack was part of "Operation Avenge Assange."

A total of 21 arrests across the UK, US and the Netherlands were confirmed yesterday as part of a coordinated operation with the FBI. Investigations into Anonymous and loosely related splinter group LulzSec are thought to be ongoing.

The teenager in the UK was arrested at a south London address yesterday.

The 14 individuals arrested in the US were found across the country in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio.

Anonymous hit a number of organisations for dropping WikiLeaks support in 2011, including MasterCard and Visa, as well as PayPal.

The eBay subsidiary had its Twitter account hijacked earlier this month, as the perpetrators sent out messages criticising PayPal. Attackers put out tweets promoting paypalsucks.com.

Earlier this year, UK police arrested five males, all under the age of 30, in relation to pro-WikiLeaks Anonymous attacks.