Question: I'm not security literate, and if I was, I probably wouldn't be asking this question. As a regular tech news follower, I'm really surprised by the [outrage](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_%28group%29#Activities) of [Anonymous (hacker group)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_%28group%29), but as a critical thinker, I'm unable to control my curiosity to dig out how exactly they are doing this? Frankly, this group really scares me.

One thing that I don't understand is how they haven't been caught yet. Their IP addresses should be traceable when they DDOS, even if they spoof it or go through a proxy.

* The server with which they are spoofing should have recorded the IPs of these guys in its logs. If the govt. ask the company (which owns the server) don't they give the logs?
* Even if it is a private server owned by these guys, doesn't IANA (or whoever the organization is) have the address & credit card details of the guy who bought & registered the server?
* Even if they don't have that, can't the ISPs trace back to the place these packets originated?

I know, if it was as simple as I said, the government would have caught them already. So how exactly are they able to escape? 

PS: If you feel there are any resources that would enlighten me, I'll be glad to read them.

[Update - this is equally appropriate when referring to the [Lulzsec group](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LulzSec), so have added a quick link to the Wikipedia page on them]

Answer: 
My answer pokes at the original question. What makes you think that they don't get caught?

The CIA and DoD found Osama bin Laden.

Typical means include OSINT, TECHINT, and HUMINT. Forensics can be done on Tor. Secure deletion tools such as sdelete, BCWipe, and DBAN are not perfect. Encryption tools such as GPG and Truecrypt are not perfect.

Online communications was perhaps Osama bin Laden's biggest strength (he had couriers that traveled to far away cyber-cafes using email on USB flash drives) and Anonymous/LulzSec's biggest weakness. They use unencrypted IRC usually. You think they'd at least be using OTR through Tor with an SSL proxy to the IM communications server(s) instead of a cleartext traffic through an exit node.

Their common use of utilities such as Havij and sqlmap could certainly backfire. Perhaps there is a client-side vulnerability in the Python VM. Perhaps there is a client-side buffer overflow in Havij. Perhaps there are backdoors in either.

Because of the political nature of these groups, there will be internal issues. I saw some news lately that 1 in 4 hackers are informants for the FBI.

It's not "difficult" to "catch" anyone. Another person on these forums suggested that I watch a video from a Defcon presentation where the presenter tracks down a Nigerian scammer using the advanced transform capabilities in Maltego. The OSINT capabilities of Maltego and the i2 Group Analyst's Notebook are fairly limitless. A little hint; a little OPSEC mistake -- and a reversal occurs: the hunter is now being hunted.
[Here is an article](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=tracking-cyber-hackers) asking (and answering) just that very question from the Scientific American site posted this month. The short answer to the question is spoofing of source addresses and the use of proxies.