NEW DELHI: An international group of hackers named ‘Anonymous’ had threatened in February to shut down the internet across the globe on March 31, 2012, Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said here on Friday.
“Anonymous had stated,’To protest Wall Street, our irresponsible leaders and beloved bankers, who are starving the world for their own selfish needs out of sheer sadistic fun, on March 31, Anonymous will shut the internet down’,” Noble said at the D P Kohli Memorial Lecture.
He said the group had said that this was a protest and they were not trying to kill the internet. They were temporarily shutting it down so that websites would be inaccessible. The Global cost of cyber crime by hackers is 388 billion dollars - which is five times the size of global cocaine trade.
The Interpol involved law enforcement agencies across many countries under ‘operation unmask’, and 25 alleged members of Anonymous, aged 17 to 40, were arrested from Argentina, Chile, Columbia and Spain.