US charges five with computer hacking

New York: US authorities today charged fivemembers of the international hacking organisation known asAnonymous with carrying out cyber attacks against prominentAmerican companies and stealing confidential account

information of over one million people.

A sixth hacker has pled guilty to a 12-count informationcharging him with computer hacking conspiraciesand other crimes.

[caption id="attachment_237007" align="alignleft" width="380" caption="The hackers are aligned with the group Anonymous, aloose confederation of computer hackers and with otheroffshoot groups including 'Internet Feds', 'LulzSec' and'AntiSec'.Reuters"][/caption]

The hackers are aligned with the group Anonymous, aloose confederation of computer hackers and with otheroffshoot groups including 'Internet Feds', 'LulzSec' and'AntiSec'.

Those charged with the computer hacking conspiracyare Ryan Ackroyd, Jake Davis, Darren Martyn, Jeremy Hammondand Donncha O'Cearrbhail.

Hector Xavier Monsegur, also known as 'Sabu', pledguilty last year to the computer hacking conspiracies.

According to the indictment unsealed today inManhattan federal court, the men targetted networks ofcompanies like Fox Broadcasting, Sony Pictures Entertainmentand Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

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Hammond, who identified himself as a member of AntiSec,was arrested in Chicago and charged with crimes relating tothe December 2011 hack of Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor), aglobal intelligence firm in Texas, which may have affectedapproximately 860,000 victims.

He also stole credit card information of approximately60,000 users and used some of the stolen data to makeunauthorised charges exceeding USD 700,000.

He then publicly disclosed some of the confidentialinformation he had stolen.

Monsegur and other members of Anonymous wereresponsible for a number of cyber attacks between December2010 and June 2011 against the websites of Visa, MasterCardand PayPal, as retaliation for the refusal of these companies

to process donations to website Wikileaks.

Between December 2010 and May 2011, members of InternetFeds engaged in a series of cyber attacks that includedbreaking into computer systems, stealing confidentialinformation, publicly disclosing stolen confidential

information, hijacking victims' e-mail and Twitter accountsand defacing victims' internet websites.

Specifically, Ackroyd, Davis, Martyn, O'Cearrbhailand Monsegur stole confidential data pertaining to 80,000 useraccounts and hacked the computer systems of Fox Broadcastingfrom which they stole data relating to more than 70,000potential contestants on Fox's show 'X-Factor'.

PTI