Anonymous’ forceful closure of more than 40 child pornography sites was apparently only the beginning of the group’s war against pedophile activity on the internet. The group has continued its action by releasing the internet addresses of 190 alleged pedophiles online, using information collected from the sites it had earlier shut down.
The information outs details for users from around the world, including the U.S., Japan and the U.K. According to a statement released alongside the IP addresses, the information released was collected in one 24-hour period using NSA-4011 standards under a closed distribution channel, and is a collection of IP addresses “accessing sites hosting child pornography on TOR darknet (sites not listed under the WWW).”
(MORE: ‘Anonymous’ Forces 40+ Child Pornography Sites Offline)
In addition, the group claims to have uncovered the identity of the operator of Freedom Hosting, the hosting service that it described as “the host of the largest collection of child pornography on the internet” as developer and privacy advocate Mike Perry.
Perry has denied any connection with Freedom Hosting, writing that he “seem[s] to be the target of a vigilante lynch mob (or a subset of one) who will not dispose themselves of the notion that I run a service called Freedom Hosting (despite having evidence in their possession to the contrary).”
It’s unknown whether the release of IP addresses is just the first of many; Anonymous had claimed to have information for more than 1,500 users accessing child pornography on the Tor network when it announced “Operation Darknet” last week.
MORE: ‘Anonymous’ Threatens to Take Down Fox News Next Month
[via Ars Technica]
Graeme McMillan is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @Graemem or on Facebook at Facebook/Graeme.McMillan. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.