'Anonymous' Busts Child Porn Ring, Publishes Names of 'Patrons'

Hacker group Anonymous briefly crashed a large collection of child pornography Web sites, and published the names of its patrons.

Last week, the cyber vigilantes, better known for targeting large corporations and oppressive government regimes, used a brute force attack to infiltrate a server called Freedom Hosting, which housed about 40 child porn sites. The biggest site was Lolita City, which contained more than 100GB of content.

According to a timeline of events posted on Pastebin, Anonymous said before taking down the sites, it issued a warning to Freedom Hosting to remove the illegal content. When it failed to do so, Anonymous attacked. The sites were down for about five minutes before an admin restored them, upon which Anonymous again launched a successful attack. Later, the group posted on Pastebin the names of 1,589 individuals who visited Lolita City.

"If the FBI, Interpol, or other law enforcement agency should happen to come across this list, please use it to investigate and bring justice to the people listed here," Anonymous wrote in a statement.
[link to www.pcmag.com]