UK police arrest Wikileaks group for web attacks

Police in the UK have arrested five men yesterday related to distributed denial of service attacks (DDOS). The group known as Anonymouse have been in the press regularly in the last month.

In the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said that their agents have undertaken more than 40 search warrants as part of the investigation and that the attacks were facilitated by software the group has made available for free on the internet.

The agency said “The FBI is working closely with its international law enforcement partners and others to mitigate these threats.”

Wikileaks, which was founded by Julian Assange, an Australian born man has been disclosing classified U.S. diplomatic dispatches which have included many embarassing assessments of world leaders as well as classified documents related to wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

The prime candidate for the leak of these documents is pointing to a former U.S. Intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning.

In support of Wikileaks, many internet activists have joined the cause with a series of online assaults against institutions who are being viewed as enemies of Wikileaks. So far Amazon.com, Visa and MasterCard have been targeted, as well as the Swedish government.

Sweden want Assange extradited from the UK so he can answer questions over sexual assault allegations, which many people have said are falsified to give them a legal excuse to question Assange.

The five males are aged between 15 to 26 and have been arrested by a specialist London police unit at their homes in central and southern England. Dutch police also arrested two teenagers suspected with involvement in the online DDOS campaign. They will face trial later this year.

KitGuru says: The maximum penalty in the United Kingdom for offenses of computer misuse is 10 years imprisonment and a fine of £5,000. The United States have a similar 10 year prison sentence with much higher fines.

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