Police have charged a man who allegedly carried out hacks as part of the hacking collective known as Anonymous. Student Peter David Gibson from Hartlepool, Cleveland (in the UK) is believed to have carried out DDoS attacks against companies such as Amazon, PayPal, Mastercard and Visa in December last year.
According to The Register, Gibson was first arrested in April 2011, where the Metropolitan Police questioned him alongside five other people. The Met said that the charge was to do with an “unauthorized act in relation to a computer” and a conspiracy to impair the operation of a computer or hinder access to a program or data.
The six people were originally arrested for allegedly being a part of "Operation Avenge Assange". This was the name picked out by Anonymous for their large scaling DDoS attacks, chosen because they said they were picking out firms that they felt had acted against the website Wikileaks.
In July this year, police in America also arrested 16 people that they believed had been carrying out attacks, with 14 of the suspects alleged to have taken part in "Operation Avenge Assange" The tool the group used, called LOIC, allows users to bombard websites, but doesn"t protect your IP address.