FBI arrests hacker with possible Anonymous links

The Fbi has arrested a 27 year old US man with alleged ties to the Anonymous collective after a near two-year investigation.

Fidel Salinas Jr. was charged with accessing a protected computer without authorisation and recklessly causing damage and faces a prison sentence of one to five years.

The US Government website attack compromised sensitive human resources and emergency alert data, caused slowness and latency for users, and left administrators unable to access or manage the website for most of the day, according to an affidavit.

Access to the website was the result of a brute force SQL injection attack that official said caused more than $10,000 in damages.

The FBI said he made 14,000 attempts to hack into the website, particularly the administration page, according to the affidavit.

The internet protocol address linked the attacks to a Texas address belonging to the man's partner.

Salinas Jr said he intended to alert the site's network administrators.

But the FBI recovered from Salinas' computer hacking tools and an internet relay chat containing logs pertaining to the revived AntiSec movement, now affiliated with the Anonymous collective.

Salinas said he used SQL injection techniques to access the website and had chatted with members of Anonymous.

This article originally appeared at scmagazineus.com