According to Softpedia, the Moneybookers attack was probably retroactive in nature, because the payment services organization stopped doing business with WikiLeaks in August of this year.
The attack on the Dutch National Police Service appears to be in retaliation for the arrest of 16-year-old teenager from the Hague, who is believed to be one of the Operation Payback organizers, which Anonymous has linked with.
However, Infosecurity notes that this particular attack was before the Dutch police reported the arrest of a second teenager – this time a 19-year-old-man – in connection with a DDoS attack on a government website.
Dutch Police said over the weekend that the offense of a DDoS attack carries a potential prison sentence of six years.
Reporting on the rapidly-unfolding saga, Lucian Constantin of Softpedia said that the IT security industry has found it something of a shock that the DDoS attacks "are so effective against high profile websites with solid infrastructures, especially since the number of active participants at any given time is usually in the hundreds."
"However, some security researchers who monitor the situation have reason to believe that a botnet made up of 30,000 infected computers is also being used", he said.
The group behind the LOIC DDoS application are now claiming it is named after the Low Orbit Ion Cannon mentioned in a number of popular sci-fi novels.
The AFP newswire, meanwhile, says that the 19-year-old arrested on Saturday afternoon is not linked directly to the 16-year-old arrested late last week, but is connected with a DDoS attack on the Dutch national prosecutor.
This suggests that the Dutch Police are monitoring the IP addresses of people staging the DDoS attacks, and taking action against high profile aggressors, Infosecurity notes.
The AFP newswire quotes the Dutch prosecutor's office as claiming responsibility for an attack on Twitter, saying it was to avenge the arrest of a 16-year-old who had attacked opponents of whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
The 19-year-old suspected hacker had incited others to take part in Friday's attack, the prosecutor told the newswire.