One would imagine that trying to catch the members of – and prosecute – a barely organized, loosely linked international group of hackers would be a bit like playing “whack a mole”: a lot of effort for very little return.

But it's clear that international police organizations plan to try, at least when it comes to Anonymous, the “hacktivist” group that has caused rather a lot of embarrassment as of late for national and regional government organizations, corporations and even mass transit companies.

Today it's the turn of Scotland Yard to try and cut one head off the hydra. The Associated Press (News - Alert) is reporting that British police say they have charged a 22-year-old man who is an active member of Anonymous. Though few details were released, Scotland Yard says they have filed charges against  Peter David Gibson, a student from Hartlepool in northern England. London's Metropolitan Police said in a statement that Gibson was charged with a conspiracy to impair the operation of a computer or hinder access to a program or data, apparently in connection with denial-of-service attacks on Web sites.

According to the AP, Gibson was arrested on April 5 of this year as part of Scotland Yard's ongoing investigation into denial-of-service attacks carried out by Anonymous against various companies with which the hacktivist groups has taken issue, including PayPal (owned by eBay (News - Alert)), Sony and Visa.

A denial-of-service attack is initiated by presenting a Web site with so many page requests that it effectively shuts down, choked with fake traffic.

Anonymous says denial-of-service attacks and hacks of proprietary information from Web sites is a kind of civil disobedience. Prosecutors in the U.S. have thus far arrested and charged 14 people in connection to the same attacks, and police in Spain arrested three members of Anonymous in June of this year.

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