Rogue hacktivist group Anonymous has issued a statement in response to the arrest of fourteen alleged members who are being charged with participating in the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against online payment processor PayPal that occurred late last year.
On December 3rd PayPal announced it was suspending the fund-raising account of WikiLeaks for violation of the Acceptable Use Policy. Following PayPal's suspension of the WikiLeaks account, Anonymous launched the DDoS attack that temporarily disable some of the company's websites.
Anonymous members released the following statement on Pastebin:
Hello thar FBI and international law authorities,
We recently stumbled across the following article with amazement and a certain amount of amusement:
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/20/138555799/fbi-arrests-alleged-anonymous-hackers
The statements made by deputy assistant FBI director Steve Chabinsky in this article clearly seem to be directed at Anonymous and Lulz Security, and we are happy to provide you with a response.
You state:
"We want to send a message that chaos on the Internet is unacceptable, [even if] hackers can be believed to have social causes, it's entirely unacceptable to break into websites and commit unlawful acts."
Now let us be clear here, Mr. Chabinsky, while we understand that you and your colleagues may find breaking into websites unacceptable, let us tell you what WE find unacceptable:
- Governments lying to their citizens and inducing fear and terror to keep them in control by dismantling their freedom piece by piece.
- Corporations aiding and conspiring with said governments while taking advantage at the same time by collecting billions of funds for federal contracts we all know they can't fulfil.
These governments and corporations are our enemy. And we will continue to fight them, with all methods we have at our disposal, and that certainly includes breaking into their websites and exposing their lies.
- Lobby conglomerates who only follow their agenda to push the profits higher, while at the same time being deeply involved in governments around the world with the only goal to infiltrate and corrupt them enough so the status quo will never change.
We are not scared any more. Your threats to arrest us are meaningless to us as you cannot arrest an idea. Any attempt to do so will make your citizens more angry until they will roar in one gigantic choir. It is our mission to help these people and there is nothing - absolutely nothing - you can possibly to do make us stop.
"The Internet has become so important to so many people that we have to ensure that the World Wide Web does not become the Wild Wild West."
Let me ask you, good sir, when was the Internet not the Wild Wild West? Do you really believe you were in control of it at any point? You were not.
That does not mean that everyone behaves like an outlaw. You see, most people do not behave like bandits if they have no reason to. We become bandits on the Internet because you have forced our hand. The Anonymous frakslap rings through your ears like hacktivism movements of the 90s. We're back - and we're not going anywhere. Expect us.
It is assumed that federal law enforcement authorities are continuing their investigations into subsequent attacks claimed by the hacktivists, including attacks against Visa, MasterCard, PostFinance Bank, Amazon, Bank of America, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce website, and for having breached the systems of security consultants HBGary Federal.
More arrests on the way - expect them...