Mfarhanonline Social Media News: After 25 members of Anonymous were arrested on cybercrime charges in South America and Europe Wednesday, a vital question was left unanswered: How, exactly, did police track down the suspects? Anonymous is a loosely organized collective of “hacktivists.” Its members remain hidden behind pseudonyms, not unlike characters in The Matrix . Given its members’ technological prowess, it was considered unlikely that police could trace their online activity. However, Anonymous’ structure included a fatal flaw: members don’t usually share their real-life identities with one another. Therefore, the group of hackers could be susceptible to attempts to slip into the organization unnoticed. It turns out police may have relied on that tactic: infiltration. In a message posted to its blog, Anonymous Iberoamérica (which coordinates Anonymous activity in Spain and Latin America), Anonymous said its members were captured not through “intelligence work or informatics strategy,” but rather through “the use of spies and informants within the movement.” ( Mfarhanonline has not linked to the blog, as it is ridden with pop-ups and is difficult to load.) Self-proclaimed members of Anonymous told The Associated Press Thursday that almost all of its members arrested this week communicated on the same website. That led some to believe that police had infiltrated that site to identify Anonymous members who were attempting to coordinate cybercrime activity. “The great majority of those implicated were people inhabiting the servers of anonworld.info, something that disconcerts us,” Anonymous member “Skao” told the AP . Some Anonymous members claimed their compadres hadn’t taken the necessary steps to mask their movements online. They also said some of the arrested came from ! an exper ienced hacker group, “Sector404,” while others were ragtag activists who took part in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against Anonymous’ targets. SEE ALSO: Police Arrest 25 Anonymous Hackers In Four Countries Twenty-five Anonymous members were taken into custody Wednesday in response to the group’s attacks on government websites in Colombia and Chile. Soon after, Anonymous turned its sights on Interpol, the international police agency that coordinated the arrests. Interpol’s website was down for some time, but is now loading without trouble. Do you think Anonymous is vulnerable to police infiltration? Is it a legitimate tactic? Sound off in the comments below. Images courtesy of Flickr , Marco Gomes More About: anonymous , trending Social Media reviews series maintain by Mayya
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