Saturday, June 11, 2011

Three suspected leaders of the online activist group called "Anonymous" were arrested in three cities in Spain, according to the police on Friday.

The loosely-knit international "hacktivists" has claimed responsibility for attacking the Websites of financial companies that severed their ties with WikiLeaks such as Mastercard, Visa and PayPal.

In a police statement, the three unidentified detainees were nabbed in the southern city of Almeria, Barcelona and Valencia. There was no mention when the arrest was made, AP said.

The statement said, among the victims of the Spanish wing of cyber attackers were banks; Sony's PlayStation network; Enel, an Italian energy company; and the Algerian, Chilean, Colombian, Egyptian, Iranian, Libyan, and New Zealand governments.

Cyber crime Spanish police has been analyzing over two million online chat and Internet pages since October last year until they finally traced the three suspects.

This means that netizens like you and me may have probably been under the watchful eyes of the state.

Aside from Spain, the other countries to have acted against cyber crimes committed by the "Anonymous" are the US and UK.

London had arrested five young men in January suspected to be involved in computer attacks, which supported the whistle blowing site that published thousands of secret US diplomatic cables.