According to a NBC report based on the documents released from the NSA by Edward Snowden, described that a Brititsh spy agency turned their name anonymously against a Cyber Attack Method and also for other hacktivist groups.according to the documents a division of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ),the U.K.’s communications intelligence agency,used distributed-denial-of-service attacks to disturb communications among members of Anonymous.DDoS is used for targeting financial institutions,trade groups, and government entities.It is the same cyber attack technique used by the hacktivist group to escalate online attacks after PayPal and banks refused to process payments for WikiLeaks.
The Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group or JTRIG is known as Dubbed Rolling Thunder by the GCHQ.According to this document,the attack succeeded to reduce the number of users in Anonymous cat rooms by 80 percent.Glenn Greenwald. the co-author of the NBC report and also the jurnalist who published the first NSA stories based on evidences obtained by Snowden,demonstrates that this is the first time when the existence of the JTRIG has been disclosed.According to the report,those hackers had stolen confidential informations from PayPal,and sent one person,are now in prison.The unit’s infiltration of IRC chat rooms helped to identify those hackers.The attack on PayPal was part of an anti-copyright campaign,”Operation Payback” that began after the 2010 shutdown of Swedish torrent-tracking site,The Pirate Bay.
In reaction,the group supposedly launched DDoS attacks against the Recording industry Association of America,the Motion picture association of America, and the U.S.Copyright Office.It was further extended to Bank of america and credit card and companies such as MasterCard and Visa for their refusal to precess WikiLeaks payments.The documents,from a PowerPoint presentation prepared for 2012 NSA conference known as SIGDEV.It is detailed how agents engaged hacktivists by arrangeing as fellow hackers,deriving in one instance in the conviction of Edward Pearson,a British hacker ,for the vandalism of 8 million identifications from Paypal accounts.
GCHQ refused to remark on the documents mentioned in the report,but asserted in a statement to CNET that managed within the boundaries of British law.
