Fourteen of those arrested were charged in relation for the WikiLeaks-inspired distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on PayPal’s website after the online service suspended payments to the whistleblowing portal.
The fourteen defendants were charged with numerous counts of conspiracy and intentional damage to a protected computer via an indictment revealed today by the Northern District court of California in San Jose.
Two other indictments filed in Florida and New Jersey were unsealed as well today for separate cybercrime events, including the arrest of Lance Moore, 21, of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Moore was charged for his involvement in a June 25 cyber intrusion incident where he allegedly accessed AT&T’s servers and posted the company’s proprietary information on a file sharing cite, according the FBI’s release on the indictments.
The FBI advised in its release that authorities in the UK and the Netherlands have arrested additional individuals for alleged crimes related to the US charges.
Thirty-five search warrants were executed stemming from the three indictments, making it 75 searches thus far related to the FBI’s investigation into cyber attacks claimed by the Anonymous group and its offshoot, LulzSecurity.