A crackdown on hacker group Anonymous has seen the arrests of four suspected hacktivists in Italy, report local police. The four are thought to be behind multiple cyber-attacks on the Vatican and the Italian government.
The suspects have been placed under house arrest for the time
being while searches are conducted on their respective properties.
The operation, named ‘Tango Down’ by Italian police, was a
countrywide crackdown led by the General Public Prosecutor's Office
in Rome.
Italian police released a statement saying the four individuals
were part of the hacktivist movement and were responsible for
attacks on Italian government bodies and the Vatican. However,
investigators added that the group also carried out criminal
activities using the name of Anonymous as a mask to hide
behind.
“We have demonstrated that this branch of Anonymous Italy was a
criminal organization that used the name of Anonymous as a pretext
to carry out their own activities that are not connected to the
political agenda of the Anonymous movement in other parts of the
world,” said the police statement.
According to police information the four individuals hacked into
businesses, only to then contact them and sell their own IT
solutions as anti-virus software.
Anonymous has yet to make a statement regarding the arrest of the
four individuals.
Last year the Vatican’s website was taken down by the hacktivist
group who cited the “corruption” of the Roman Catholic Church as
the principle motivation for the cyber-assault.
"Anonymous decided today to besiege your site in response to the
doctrine, to the liturgies, to the absurd and anachronistic
concepts that your for-profit organization spreads around the
world,” said a statement posted on the Italian website of the
Anonymous movement.
"This attack is not against the Christian religion or the
faithful around the world but against the corrupt Roman Apostolic
Church."
Anonymous rose to prominence in late 2010 when it executed a series
of cyber-attacks against companies that were trying to prevent the
disclosure of information by whistleblowing site WikiLeaks.
More recently the group has carried out attacks on Israeli
government websites and shut down media accounts and official sites
in North Korea.