U.S. authorities arrested 14 people Tuesday on suspicion they were involved in major cyber hacking attacks that were committed as retaliation against companies which stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks after the whistleblowing site published scores of government documents detailing U.S. war operations.
Internet vigilante hacking group Anonymous has claimed credit for disrupting corporate and government websites, including an Arizona police website, and those of Visa, MasterCard and PayPal.
The federal indictment (PDF) alleged that the group coordinated and executed distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on PayPal computers, making their servers unavailable to users from Dec. 6, 2010, to Dec. 10, 2010.
"DDoS attacks are attempts to render computers unavailable to users through a variety of means, including saturating the target computers or networks with external communications requests, thereby denying service to legitimate users," according to the Department of Justice.
Fourteen arrests were made in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio, according to a news release from the Department of Justice. The FBI executed more than 35 search warrants.
In Los Angeles, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said warrants were executed there.
Although no arrests were made in New York, FBI agents conducted six residential raids in the state earlier Tuesday, including one in Brooklyn and five on Long Island, seizing computers, FBI spokesman in New York Jim Margolin said.
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MSNBC reports the Department of Justice said so far, "more than 75 searches have taken place in the United States as part of the ongoing investigations into these attacks."
Seized equipment was suspected of being used by members of the loosely organized group of hackers, which law enforcement officials believe are mostly in their teens and early 20s.
FBI officials in California and Florida said searches were underway but declined to confirm any arrests, according to MSNBC.
A spokesman for the FBI in New Jersey said one arrest was made there but declined to say where or on what charges.
The group teamed up with the Lulz Security group of hackers in June. LulzSec has breached websites of Sony Corp, the CIA and a British police unit.
According to a Department of Justice news release, the charge of intentional damage to a protected computer carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Each count of conspiracy carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Federal agents have now carried out more than 75 searches in the United States as part of the ongoing investigations into these attacks.
Tuesday's raids were conducted in coordination with similar raids in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands in which five people were detained.
