British police have arrested five men for their alleged involvement in a string of denial-of-service attacks launched late last year by hacker group Anonymous in defense of WikiLeaks.
Two men, ages 20 and 26, and three teenagers, ages 15, 16, and 19, were charged with violating the Computer Misuse Act of 1990, the BBC reported. The arrests were carried out by the Central e-Crime Unit in the U.K. residential neighborhoods of West Midlands, Surrey, Northamptonshire, Hertfordshire, Surrey, and London as a part of an ongoing investigation into the DDoS attacks by European and American authorities.
After WikiLeaks began the release of more than 250,000 confidential U.S. diplomatic cables nearly three months ago, a flood of companies yanked their support for the site. The whistle-blowing site was booted from its Amazon-hosted server, it lost its U.S. domain, and financial companies ceased processing the donations necessary to support the non-profit.
"Hacktivist" group Anonymous, in turn, started to fight back against those attempting to silence WikiLeaks. MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal were among the companies targeted.
However, not all of the targets were crippled. An attack against Amazon proved unsuccessful.
Anonymous operates hacker group Operation Payback, which reportedly includes members of the "/b/" bulletin board 4chan.org. In addition to defending WikiLeaks, Operation Payback runs a campaign against anti-piracy organizations, and has targeted the Web properties of groups like the Recording Industry Association of America, the U.S. Copyright Office, and the Motion Picture Association of America.
The BBC said Anonymous' members prefer to call themselves "average Internet citizens," as opposed to hackers. Their efforts have most recently extended to Egypt, where amid mounting government protests, the authorities have blocked Twitter.
U.S. authorities are continuing an investigation into WikiLeaks. Julian Assange, the site's editor, is fighting extradition to Sweden where he faces unrelated rape charges filed by two former WikiLeaks volunteers. He's currently residing in London, where he was freed on bail and is set to appear in court for a full extradition hearing early next month.