Hacker group Anonymous has taken down child porn websites located in hidden regions of the internet – the darknet – as well as releasing information on 1,500 alleged users of such websites, including a site named Lolita City and at least 40 other websites.
The hacker group has published the names of 1,500 people who used Lolita City, where it claims users traded in images of child sexual abuse.
Anonymous is understood to have taken down 40 websites in a co-ordinated series of attacks.
As part of Operation Darknet, the hacker group targeted the Tor network, which is believed to be used by practitioners to hide their anonymity by routing browser enquiries across a series of servers, making it difficult for police forces to trace their activity.
According to the BBC, the Tor network and the ability to hide users’ activities was key to many of the activities online by protesters in the Arab countries this year to protect themselves against the authorities.
However, Anonymous noticed at least one site was using the darknet for trading child abuse material (CAM) and with a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack was able to take it down and get access to links to other sites.
It has vowed to continue the attacks until the images and other content is removed.
In related news, Anonymous has allied itself with Occupy Wall Street protesters and in a show of defiance against alleged police brutality has leaked more than 600MB of information from various police websites, such as the International Chiefs of Police, as well as police organisations in Boston and Alabama.
