Once again hacktivist collective group Anonymous has come into public focus. This time a hacker known as "idahc", who may be affiliated with the hacktivist group, found vulnerabilities in an Apple Consultants website survey from abs.apple.com. The hacker infiltrated the site and later a dozen Apple usernames and hashed passwords were dumped on Pastebin. This latest attack has revealed a crack in Apple's armor, who has previously been considered a virtually impregnable cyber fortress for hackers, malware, viruses, and any other kind cyberspace danger. The group posted previously on one of its alias Twitter accounts @AnonymousIRC, that “Apple could be targeted, too. But don’t worry, we are busy elsewhere”, according to Financial Times online, FT.com.

     This comes on the heels of another cyber attack on FoxNews.com. The subsidiary Fox News Digital's twitter account, @foxnewspolitics, was hacked last night by a preivously unknown hacktivist group calling themselves The Script Kiddies, and posting erroneous reports of President Obama's assassination. In the series of faked tweets, The Script Kiddies offered this message to individuals linked to Anonymous: "@AnonymousIRC TheScriptKiddies would love to assist in #antisec in anyway you need assistance." This is apparantly a call to join forces in more "antisec", or anti-security, criminal mischief.

     Anonymous, and their more sophisticated LulzSec offshoot, have been perpetuating large-scale hacks against a number of multinational companies and government agencies, including Citibank, Sony, a U.S. defense contractor in cybersecurity, and NATO. LulzSec (short for Lulz Security), officially disbanded last week after a 50-day streak of high-profile cyber-security breaches, including the cybersecurity for the CIA and UK.

     It seems, however, that law enforcement are making progress in their probes of hacktivists around the world. A 19 year-old boy in England, Ryan Cleary, was arrested and LulzSec, before they disbanded last week, acknolwedged his help in several attacks. More strange, however, is evidence of internal conflict. The recent arrests of a teenager in Ohio and a 29 year old woman in Davenport, Iowa seem to be the results of being outed by fellow hacktivists. The Ohio teen was outed by Anonymous members, who published his address and online tags because they blamed him for Ryan Cleary's arrest. The Iowa woman was arrested after she was outed by Anonymous members for leaking internal online chats. She said she leaked the information because Anonymous had turned on a friend of hers.

     It's apparent that these hacktivist non-collectives plan to continue their cyber criminal activities. However, as new groups form and larger groups begin to implode, it seems similar to the street-gang landscape of the 90's, where allegiances shift and new groups pop up so often that the instability actually makes it more difficult for law enforcement to trace, trap, and prosecute them. One things is for sure, with nearly three months of major security breaches by these groups, companies and government agencies are no longer taking any chances, and have been shoring up online security. Likewise, we can expect these hacktivist groups attack bigger and more high-profile targets.