Five males have been taken into custody this morning, after their attacks against websites like PayPal, Visa, Mastercard and Amazon. The massive online group called "Anonymous" was successful in disrupting service to the websites, all except for Amazon.com.
The whistle blowing website, Wikileaks, released a number of classified documents, sparking a giant community of support for the owner Julian Assange. In the following days, the shutdown of Wikileaks PayPal account sparked a massive uproar from the community following Julian. Websites, such as 4chan, began thinking of a way to get back at these websites, dubbed "Operation Payback".
Operation Payback launched DDoS (Distrubuted Denial of Service) attacks against websites like PayPal and Mastercard, eventually rending their servers useless, taking the site offline.
In the following days and weeks, a number of arrests were made, including a a 16 year old boy, and even a 19 year old. The tool the group used, called LOIC, allows users to bombard websites, but doesn"t protect your IP address. Reports issued warnings that Operation Payback might reveal your IP address, leading police directly to you.
As reported by the BBC, five males arrested aged 15, 16, 19 and two adults aged 20 and 26, were members behind the "Anonymous" attack against PayPal and other websites. It is expected that there will be more arrests in the following days and weeks, from various countries.