FBI Raids Homes of Suspected 'Anonymous' Hackers In New York

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The FBI raided six locations in New York and conducted searches in California on Tuesday as part of an investigation of the Internet vigilante hacking group Anonymous, agency officials said.

One residence in Brooklyn and five others on Long Island were searched for computers and computer-related accessories suspected of being used by members of the grass-roots organization inspired by WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, FBI spokesman Peter Donald in New York said.

Another FBI spokesman, Tim Flannelly, said the searches in New York were ``in relation to an ongoing investigation'' of Anonymous.

At least one laptop was removed from one home. No arrests were made in New York.

An FBI spokeswoman in California said ``law enforcement actions'' were conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area but declined to say if any arrests were made.

Anonymous claimed to have broken into Apple Inc servers earlier this month. It also launched attacks in December that temporarily shut down sites of MasterCard Inc and Visa Inc using simple software tools freely available over the Internet.

Anonymous, which the FBI believes is mostly made up of hackers believed to be in their teens and early 20s, also has released scores of private e-mails and other data from an Arizona police website.

The group teamed up with the Lulz Security group of hackers in June. LulzSec has breached websites of Sony Corp, the CIA and a British police unit.

Experts say the FBI raids should have been expected as the group's actions have become more daring.

"I don't think anybody should be surprised,'' said Josh Shaul, chief technical officer of Application Security, Inc., which helps companies protect their data. "They played with fire and they got burned.''

(Reporting by Basil Katz and Christine Kearney in New York, Dan Levine in San Francisco, Diane Bartz in Washington)

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.

Comments

[dbrett480]

01:21 PM on 07/23/2011

That's a lot of parents' basements that got raided.

[Dan Bates]

06:10 AM on 07/20/2011

Mommy....help me....mommy........mommy...

[Gramatik]

11:00 AM on 07/20/2011

Is that what you've said when you got hacked?

[HenryDavid]

03:58 AM on 07/20/2011

Any computer nerd who finds and exposes "secret" communications between Monsanto and the U.S. government/state department (e.g., wikileaks exposure of cablegate--monsanto's illegal connection to the u.s. ambassador to France) is okay by me.

[FaceTheTruth00]

03:05 AM on 07/20/2011

Dear HuffPo,

I'm sorry this is off-topic, but there's nowhere to put this. Please put the comments system back the way it was. My comments always default to "Favorites" and it is maddening. I'm tired of putting it back to Recency for every article. More than that though, I cannot respond to anyone who has responded to a comment I made, because every time I click the link it takes me to "Favorites".

Needless to say, I am not going to waste my time going through comments page by page, looking for the appropriate one I want to respond to. Especially when there's 30 or more pages, and the comment was made more than a few hours ago.

Thank you kindly.

[Deborah M Noble]

02:09 AM on 07/20/2011

Wow, how impressive! Why doesn't FBI should go after Corporate and Bank criminals instead. Great, our tax dollars are going towards the arrest of kids and the real criminals out there are living happily ever after. I don't see any of them arresting Murdoch and his posse criminal family for hacking and hurting so many innocent people.

[ectullis]

01:50 AM on 07/20/2011

Don't arrest them hire them.

[chasborg]

01:23 AM on 07/20/2011

Hacking is illegal, it's that simple. Go back a few years before computers when people actually wrote real letters and other things on paper. Then imagine a thief breaking into your house or office and stealing your letters or documents. No doubt, that's a crime. Hacking is the same thing minus the paper. It's a criminal act.

[Gramatik]

11:13 AM on 07/20/2011

Okay. Remember the time (about 10 years ago..) when it also was illegal for the Federal Government to listen to your phone calls, break in to your home, detain you, take you to undisclosed location, torture you and keep you there for unlimited period of time with out access to the lawyer? – all without the warrant or the court order?
How do you fight back??? – With Information!!!!

[chasborg]

02:06 PM on 07/20/2011

Did you ever hear about "Two wrongs don't make a right"? Well, two crimes don't make anything right either.

[Eris23]

05:29 PM on 07/21/2011

However, from the information released so far, nobody was arrested for "hacking." they were arrested for running a program called LOIC which enabled their machine to be used in a DDOS attack. This is something that you or anyone could do. DDOS attacks are not hacking, particularly in the way you describe. It's more like a digital version of everyone showing up at a meeting at the same time and shouting so loud that the speaker can't be heard. Obnoxious and annoying? Yes. But, no, it's not exposing any of your secrets.

[chasborg]

05:46 PM on 07/21/2011

You're right. But the reason for the raids was that the FBI thought that hacking was being done and that is illegal. Could be they were wrong.

[Gramatik]

10:01 PM on 07/21/2011

Not everything is black or white, especially in society where even supreme (un) justices are influenced by special interests that run the country. One can not say that an action is wrong just because it's illegal. Corrupt establishments always will produce a counter movements that will be illegal, but without those movements there will be no change.
You can not apply a cookie cuter sayings as "Two wrongs don't make a right" to every situation - this world is more complicated than that..

[irrenmann]

01:21 AM on 07/20/2011

"Anonymous, which the FBI believes is mostly made up of hackers believed to be in their teens and early 20s"

The FBI is way, way off base.

[speed1334]

04:05 AM on 07/20/2011

I'm sold. I very much trust the idea of a single commenter over that of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You do know that they carry on investigations in that department, right?

[irrenmann]

04:42 PM on 07/20/2011

Convincing you is not important, but if you spent even a few minutes checking out Anonymous yourself, you'd learn it's a joke—a literal joke, as in an idea perpetuated to watch the old media misinterpret it, as it has no fixed membership or command structure that can be investigated the way you describe. As for people who've perpetrated individual incidents, they are an extremely diverse cross-section, often including security and intelligence community professionals in their off-duty hours—which means the results of "investigations" like this will continue to perpetuate the joke. Go ahead and look into the accuracy of my statements, if you like, but next time you might want to do so before attempting snark about them.

You do know this isn't the FBI's field for such investigations, right? You do know they routinely defer work in this content area whenever possible as a matter of publicly stated policy, right? You do know they are fallible, right?

[T H-C]

01:20 AM on 07/20/2011

Great! And when will we read about a FBI raid at Murdoch's home/office?!

[automan 57]

01:10 AM on 07/20/2011

FBI ; Curious when are you going to raid the justice department and seize all their records on Fast and Furious. What about project Castaway?? J. Edgar Hoover would of been there already !!! Eric Holder has some explaining to do !!!

[FoxAlwaysLies]

12:45 AM on 07/20/2011

For every one FBI agent, there is about 10 hackers. If you people think they are going to curb the hacking, think again. Pros and cons to everything. Internet is great because of all the info and data that we can freely see without leaving the confidnes of our homes. But it also invites unwanted peoople if we are not protected. Yet sometimes I agree with hackers and their agenda because they are sometimes the balance this world needs when these corporations and agencies get out of hand with the people. Just a thought.

[freekybig53]

11:35 PM on 07/19/2011

Questions from the FBI are a danger to you and a burden to others !!

[chasborg]

01:11 AM on 07/20/2011

What are you talking about?

[freekybig53]

08:20 AM on 07/20/2011

Sometimes even I don't know !1

[teltech543]

11:07 PM on 07/19/2011

I doubt if they caught anyone. They should stay away from financial institutions (unless they are looking at making money through theft). Go for the government agencies. We are talking Freedom of Information.

[shakesome]

12:07 AM on 07/20/2011

Freedom of Informatio­n refers to info that should be available to the public. Not all gov't info SHOULD be available to the public. I WANT my gov't to keep some info secret, for national security reasons. The only question is, what should be available, what should not.

[Zabel]

10:45 PM on 07/19/2011

Looks like they weren't anonymous enough.

[SlapMeBum]

12:06 AM on 07/20/2011

There are always people smarter than they are out there that work on the correct side of things.

[rodnox]

10:40 PM on 07/19/2011

THE HACKERS ARE THE FUTURE OF THE FREE WORLD----

[SlapMeBum]

12:07 AM on 07/20/2011

If they type in all CAPS, they are missing half of it.

[shakesome]

12:09 AM on 07/20/2011

The same kids spend most of their time stealing data via file sharing and cracking codes: music, movies, video games. they better learn some morality before they take over.