Five men have been arrested in the UK in connection with web attacks carried out by headless cult Anonymous.

The BBC reports that the arrests took place at residential addresses in the West Midlands, Northamptonshire, Hertfordshire, Surrey and London this morning.

Police swooped on the addresses at 7.00am this morning, nabbing the five men in an investigation into offences committed under the Computer Misuse Act.

The operation carried out by the Central e-Crime Unit was focused on Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks apparently organised by Anonymous, and conducted against the web sites of Mastercard, PayPal, and Amazon.

British police collaborated with chums in Europe and the US, the BBC said.

The five men are currently helping police with their inquiries at their local police stations.