Anonymous is at it again in their hacking crusade. And their cause is nothing short of noble.

The group is claiming responsibility for the temporary take-down of 40 websites hosted with Freedom Hosting that are known to publish child pornography.

“On October 6th, 2011 some of us Anon were doing research into encryption and security,” says a press release from Anonymous on Pastebin. “The 'darknet' sites of TOR, I2P, and Freenode piqued our interest. We were aware that, TOR and I2P were originally designed to protect individuals from the oppressive governments of China, Iran and protect Free Speech.”

However, Anon says the original purpose of the services has been subverted, so they took it down. And then they grabbed a list of more than 1,500 usernames from a site called "Lolita City" and posted it to Pastebin. They're calling it Operation Darknet, and their mission is to take out the child porn sites using the Tor network and other similar networks to publish, promote and distribute child porn.

Unfortunately, as all great acts do, this feat has its detractors. Critics say they're not allowed to discuss any specifics, but authorities may or may not have been investigating these sites. So Anonymous may or may not have caused harm just by trying to do good. That's okay, though, says Anonymous. They're more than willing to share their information with the authorities.

Anonymous says, “We will continue to not only crash Freedom Hosting's server, but any other server we find to contain, promote, or support child pornography.”