Leaks reveal GCHQ infiltrated and attacked Anonymous

New Edward Snowden leaks reveal that a division of Britain's spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), infiltrated well-known hacktivist groups, including Anonymous and LulzSec.

The whistleblower leaked PowerPoint slides to NBC News, who first broke the story.

According to the slides, which were originally presented at a 2012 NSA conference, the spy agency deployed a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the internet relay chat rooms used by Anonymous members in 2011. The agency also implanted malware to uncover their identities.

In addition to identifying and imprisoning a hacker who stole data from PayPal, the spying division exposed the hacker "p0ke" to authorities through an infected webpage that employees sent to him in a chat. He was never arrested, however.