In what appears to be a coordinated sing operation named “Operation Unmask” by International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), 25 suspected members of the hacker group Anonymous were arrested yesterday. The operation, which netted suspects in more than a dozen cities in Europe and Latin America, was carried out after going through computer logs in order to trace IP addresses. It also netted 10 suspects in Argentina, six in Chile and five in Colombia, Spanish police said.

Anonymous is a worldwide hacker group that feels its mission is to keep the internet free for all. The international hacktivist group in the past has mainly focused on the entertainment business. But more recently has been getting involved in political situations. Taking credit for bringing down the websites of the FBI, CIA, DoD, IRS, and many more. Because Anonymous is not an “official” group, with no real leadership, pinning them down has become a very difficult task for international law enforcement.

The group Anonymous uses a very simple hacking tool called a DDoS attack. The attack, a distributed denial-of-service, basically sends so many requests to the server that it cannot handle them all. In effect overloading the server and crashing the associated website.

In response to the arrests, Anonymous has taken down the INTERPOL website interpol.int. The website was down for approximately 30 min today.