Anonymous leaders may soon be arrested

An international investigation, which is conducted "based on" the latest actions of Anonymous group members, seems to be nearing its logical conclusion. In any case, investigators who are investigating the activities of the group claim that they have already taken the lead of the group. In general, there is no need to remind what the Anonymous group is, and why the lawmakers are against it. You can read about it here , here and here . In the meantime, let's see what the investigation and assistants have achieved.

So, investigators believe that the whole group includes several hundred members, of which only 30 are quite active. In addition, 10 of these 30 “are coordinators of the group, making the most decisions”. About the two leaders of the group managed to collect enough information to understand that one of them is called Owen, and he lives in New York. The name of the second member of the group is still unknown, but investigators already know that he uses the nickname Q or James Bond. It seems that Q is now looking for a replacement for the sleeping members of the group, intending to appoint other leaders. This was announced by Aaron Barr, an employee of HBGary Federal, conducting his own investigation.
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Q and other key figures live in California, and the group hierarchy is no longer a secret to the investigation. Some other high-ranking members of the Anonymous group live in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Australia. Investigators are now working to ascertain the identities of the majority of the active members of the group, participating in the communication of group members in the IRC channels used by Anonymous, as well as communicating with some members of the group on Facebook. Interestingly, some representatives of Anonymous communicate on the Web using their real names.

It is worth noting that HBGary Federal is a private computer security company. Despite the fact that HBGary Federal helps investigators, the head of the company reports that HBGary is not going to provide investigators with data obtained during a private investigation (partly because the methods used by HBGary employees are also not completely legal).

Nevertheless, experts believe that the leaders of the group are likely to be arrested soon, and all of them face imprisonment of up to 10 years. The members of the group themselves believe that the more people will use the “Ion cannon” and other software to conduct DDoD attacks, then only a small fraction of the participants in such attacks will be at least somehow punished.

Via ft.com