U.K. Releases Anons, FBI Anonymous Probe Targets Georgia Tech Student

Anonymous, the anonymous group of loyal WikiLeaks supporters, declared war against the United Kingdom in response to recent arrests against anons, otherwise members of Anonymous.

"Dear UK government, It has come to our attention that you deemed it necessary to arrest five of our fellow anons for their participation in the DDoS attacks against PayPal, Mastercard, and others, that have been carried out in our name in retaliation for those organizations' actions against WikiLeaks ... we take this as a serious declaration of war ... ".

Anonymous continues an iron clad request or face the consequences. "We will not rest until our fellow anon protesters have been released." To view more from Anonymous visit Tech News World.

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder, would be facing espionage charges if anything. Assange has crafted WikiLeaks from secret and classified information through anonymous and news link sources. Assange gathered support across the globe for his underdog patriotism in the free release of classified military information and other important documents. To U.S. officials, Assange defines a spy. To WikiLeaks supporters, Assange is classified a hero with or without bars.

Anonymous confides "you can easily arrest individuals but you cannot arrest an ideology."

As of today the three teens (15, 16, 19) and two others arrested were released. Follow that story through the Guardian. Where one story unwinds another just begins.

The FBI's press release added details involving 40 arrest warrants.

Atlanta Georgia woke up to their turn today when the FBI arrived outside of Georgia Tech's dorm room with ten others, flashlights and a loud announcement. "Open the door!"

The FBI target was 18-year-old Zhiwei 'Jack' Chen, a computer engineer. According to the 11 Alive report Chen stated that the FBI took everything involving electronics. A search warrant was left behind which indicated the motive behind the 7 a.m. unannounced FBI visit - Anonymous cyber attacks.

The task for the FBI was to find any evidence linking to the cyber attacks against Mastercard, PayPal, Visa, Bank of America and other high-end company websites. And to investigate any connection linking to Anonymous.

Chen, as most have experienced at some point of their lives, explored a chat room in past months. The room evidently grew hacker savvy as some conversations swirled around Anonymous. It is easy to get sucked into the logic of computer intelligence within a chat room.

Code manipulation attracted me to an AOL private chat room of rough edged hackers and programmers approximately sixteen years ago. Daily visits and lessons in coding came to an end when word hit fast of tracers and trackers. Everyone dodged the link, switched from 2.5 to a later version of windows and went our separate ways. It was amazing the programs those participants created, pulled and mastered. A world set to appeal to savvy computer geeks, Internet protesters, including a computer engineer like Chen.

But don't expect another Kevin Mitnick. Expect many of them. Mitnick was not the only kid digging for cyber treasures to manipulate. The day Mitnick was busted down the road in Raleigh during 1995 he was considered, by all rights and reports, the world's most wanted hacker.

An excerpt from a piece I did on Kevin last October:

"Mitnick hacked high school records, 20,000 worth in credit card information and thousands of program and data files. He took control of three central telephone offices in New York, took over all of California's telephone switchboards, breached the federal Pentagon, and launching attacks on a place called Digital Equipment where the source could not be traced nor tracked. All by which was worth $1 million to Mitnick in free software. These crimes happened before hacking into Tsutomu Shimomura's computer and stealing in value $500,000 total. And if that doesn't spell out serious hacker, perhaps knowing he hacked into NORAD will."

Mitnick owns and runs Mitnick Security. You got to love his sense of humor. It even appears in various locations of his website. It is rumored that after Mitnick was arrested he used his intelligence to work out a deal with the government to avoid a lengthy jail term.

Chen, on the other hand, has not been arrested nor considered an equal threat of Mitnick's standards neither that of Anonymous clout. He did, however, fall victim to confiscation. The FBI took his school documents, computer and other important devices.

Visit 11 Alive to view all 10 pieces of the arrest warrant. Here you'll find a list of items confiscated.

The arrest warrant includes records related to:

Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) or other DDoS tools
Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
Monikers "Internets", "Tickle", "Tickl."
Anonymous
Software piracy
Any mention of cyber attacks on major companies

Confirmation arrived within the FBI press release. The Anonymous cyber witch hunt has begun.

Source(s): Guardian; Tech News World; 11 Alive (accessed / embedded Jan. 29, 2011)