Anonymous
The Anonymous hacktivist collective has taken responsibility for taking down a number of websites Thursday. Wikipedia

The Finnish cell of the Anonymous hacktivist collective has issued a statement claiming responsibility for "exposing" a parliamentary aid's affiliation to an active neo-Nazi group.

The attack and subsequent data release reported by Anonymous Finland was released on the PasteBin web site Monday. The attack on the neo-Nazi Kansallinen Vastarinta website followed the collectives' previous pattern, breaking into the site and posting the names and details of several of the groups members.

According to the Finnish broadcaster YLE, Ulla Pyysalo, a former aid to the True Finns MP Juho Eerola announced her intention to resign from her post after her name appeared on the list published by Anonymous.

In its subsequent PasteBin statement the groups specifically cited the site's neo-Nazi leanings as the primary motivation for the attack.

"We have no tolerance for any group based on racial, sexual and religion discrimination as well as for all the people belonging to them and sharing their ideologies, which is the reason why we decided to carry out last Monday's attack," read the alleged Anonymous Finland statement.

In the alleged Anonymous statement the attack was later credited as being a part of the Anonymous and LulzSec-born Operation Anti-Security -- often abbreviated to AntiSec.

The news followed a previous cyber attack that saw the group allegedly post the personal details of as many as 16,000 people online.

"On Friday 4.11, We decided to join the international operation #AntiSec and externally
supported the hacking of several Finnish websites' databases containing personal and sensitive info of thousands of citizens residing in Finland and temporarily released them on the web."

Though unconfirmed, The Telegraph has since reported that Finnish authorities are in the process of investigating the alleged security breaches reported in the PasteBin statement.

It went on to report that Finland's communications regulator had reported to it that it "appeared" that data had been taken from a number of unnamed education groups.

It has since been questioned whether Anonymous was truly involved in the larger attack on the unnamed education groups. Statements sent to the IBTimes have since alleged that the statement claiming responsibility is fake and part of a wider smear campaign designed to "make Anonymous look bad."

UPDATE: Anonymous has since voiced its support for the Night of a Thousand Masks London protest.

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