The secretive Anonymous group in the words of one of its hackers

The row over whether or not the hacker group Anonymous has a set hierarchy, which broke out after the arrest in May of three of its members in Spain, has prompted angry debate on the internet. Sympathizers of the movement believe the group's actions to be legitimate protests, stemming from a spontaneous and horizontal movement. Those who defend the police operation against the organization, however, argue that the group is made up of criminals who illegally attack webpages.

According to the Spanish Penal Code, members of the Anonymous group may be committing an offense of interrupting the working of a third-party IT system (as covered in article 264), which carries a sentence of six months to three years' imprisonment.

But given that the group's actions are usually coordinated, and require the collaboration of a large number of people, the responsibility of each participant in these attacks is unclear.Statements made by one of the three suspects detained by the police last month - with the initials J. M. Z. F., the nickname "Mugen," and who is unemployed and from the Barcelona area - offer some inside knowledge of how the organization works. EL PAÍS has had access to these statements.

"A user has an idea and lays it out in a public blog called piratenpad," he explains. "If the idea is popular, it is suggested throughout the channel, and whoever wants to take part can do so in a number of different ways." These include publicizing the operation or taking part in denial-of-service attacks (DDoS), whereby a website is left inaccessible to regular users due to a coordinated effort by hackers to access that site's server at the same time, thus saturating it.The detained suspect began to participate in Anonymous chatrooms in October 2010. "I was just another user, taking part in DDoS attacks on an individual basis, by connecting the LOIC program [used by hackers for such attacks] to the attack servers, which were managed by Americans." That was how he contributed to the DDoS attack against the royalties and copyright-management institution SGAE in November of 2010. The suspect also explains how, later on in February or March of 2011, there was an "internal split" within the Anonymous group on an international level," with the administrators attacking each other constantly, publishing a lot of the information of users who were connected to their servers, such as nicknames, IP addresses of computers, and passwords.

"In April 2011, due to the "instability of the main server, the members of Anonymous in Spain divided themselves into two networks: Anonworld y Anonnet. Anonworld is a "private server" of an Anonymous user with the alias Devnuller (apparently used by one of the three suspects arrested, a man from Gijón with the initials R. T. S.), who "actively participated in the attacks." According to the statement, attacks were carried out from this server "with international objectives in Argentina, Colombia and Chile.

"On the Anonworld network there is a main channel, another for the "staff" ("who are the administrators," according to the statement), and another for organizing the attacks. Five people would make up the main administrators: Itzela, "who is more in charge of the server," and who caused the "split" with the other section of Anonymous in Spain; Alca, who controls the attacks; Nico Robin, the girlfriend of Alca, who "organizes and supervises the channel;" Patrocon, "who has a similar role to Nico Robin;" and Neuro, who is accused of being a "double agent between Anonymous groups," and of spying on them and publishing user data.

On the other side is Anonnet, the network that the suspect who made the statement belonged to. It's a "public server" where a specific channel named hispania has been created. The administrators of the attacks that have been carried out against this last network would be Mugen, and a user with the nicknames Wicker and Nemesis (Y. D. L. I., the third suspect, arrested in Alicante).

Wicker is defined as the "most active and main user;" one of the "principal administrators who manages the LOIC program and the Anonymous operations;" who looks for weaknesses in the IT systems that are going to be attacked; who registers the IP addresses of users; and who comes up with targets.

Mugen identifies another five users of Anonnet as the most relevant: Luna, creator of the hispania channel and radio presenter; Subversive, who moderates the channel and organizes ideas; Frenólogo, with a role similar to that of Subversive; AnonHispano_Yo, operator of the channel who comes up with ideas for the movement; and Anon666, who "is up to date with the attacks and takes part in them.

"In spite of all of the names that Mugen has offered, the police have made no further arrests. The three suspects detained in Almeria, Barcelona and Alicante were released without bail. For his part, Mugen told the police that despite having participated in attacks against the Barcelona police force and the UGT union, he was planning on leaving the movement.