The FBI has conducted more than a dozen raids and made more than a dozen arrests across the United States in connection with the Anonymous computer hacking investigation.
The officials described the sweep as a "major" law enforcement operation and say there have been 14 arrests nationwide.
FBI agents conducted raids at four New York residences as well as locations in California, New Jersey and Florida Tuesday in connection with the investigation.
Agents seized computers and computer accessories under search warrants at four homes of suspected hackers in Baldwin and Merrick both on Long island, in Brooklyn and the Bronx. The allegations are that the network of hackers allegedly carried out distributed denial of service attacks on numerous victims including corporations and their websites.
The amorphous, loosely organized group of hackers sympathetic to WikiLeaks has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks against corporate and government websites around the world. The news comes as Anonymous claimed a cyberattack that shut down the website of Rupert Murdoch's Times newspaper.
In addition, Anonymous has been linked to cyber attacks at the CIA, Sony, Fox News, the Arizona Department of Corrections and a well-known consulting firm, Booz Allen Hamilton, among others.
The group is implicated in denial-of-service attacks, in which large amounts of traffic are directed to a website, overloading it and, in effect, shutting it down.
The FBI in New York refused to confirm Tuesday's actions involved Anonymous. "These search warrants are being executed in connection with an ongoing FBI investigation," said FBI spokesman Peter Donald.
-News Source (CBS, CNN)
