More than a dozen men alleged to belong to hacktivist group Anonymous and indicted last week on charges of launching distributed denial-of-service attacks against major websites – including Visa, MasterCard and Bank of America – are proving hacker stereotypes are the farthest thing from the truth.
Ryan Gubele, 27, is employed as a reliability engineer for the Twitter website whose 2010 work with Amazon coincided with the Operation Payback attacks against the company. Anthony Tadros, 22, is a student at the University of Connecticut and once served as a security analyst for the school. Phillip Simpson, 28, works with Themis Bar Review helping students pass bar examinations.
And to buck the trend that only younger people cause chaos from behind a computer screen, 65-year-old Geoffrey Commander and 53-year-old Dennis Collins are facing charges right alongside the others.
