The FBI has handed down over 40 search warrants as part of an investigation targeting hacktivists who participated in denial of service attacks against companies that denied services to whistle blower site WikiLeaks last month.
The attacks were targeted at Amazon, PayPal, MasterCard and Visa, which all stopped providing services to WikiLeaks after it started the distribution of thousands of leaked diplomatic cables.
The FBI said in its statement that the online group “Anonymous” was behind the attacks.
“These distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) are facilitated by software tools designed to damage a computer network’s ability to function by flooding it with useless commands and information, thus denying service to legitimate users.”
“A group calling itself ‘Anonymous’ has claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying they conducted them in protest of the companies’ and organisations’ actions. The attacks were facilitated by the software tools the group makes available for free download on the internet. The victims included major U.S. companies across several industries.”
The FBI has said that participating in these attacks carries a prison sentence with a maximum of 10 years.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
