Suspected Anonymous member charged with police hacks
A man linked to notorious hacker collective Anonymous was charged on Monday with cyber attacks on police websites in the US state of Utah. John Anthony Borell III, a 21-year-old resident of Ohio, faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years and $500,000 in fines if convicted of the two counts of computer intrusion outlined in a federal indictment. "Borell hacked into protected computers without authorization on two occasions in January and intentionally caused damage to servers hosting websites for two Utah law enforcement agencies," according to the federal indictment. One target was a computer server hosting the Salt Lake City Police Department website and another was a website for the Utah Chiefs of Police Association, according to FBI agents that identified Borell as the hacker. Borell was arrested after investigators linked him to Twitter messages taking credit for the cyber attacks, according to the FBI. The criminal complaint described Borell as being associated with the "hacker-activist" network Anonymous, a loosely knit collective with no clearly defined leadership structure.
