The conflict between the group Anonymous and the Church of Scientology is a secret to no one, but secrecy of the group may have just been broken, after 18-year-old Dimitriy Guzner admitted to hacking the Church’s website, and being a member of the hacker group.

Guzner pleaded guilty to charges of hacking the website, and agreed to pay a $37,500 fee. The young man also faces 10 years in jail for his act, but the sentence in his case is yet to be announced. According to court papers, Guzner caused the transmission of information, codes and commands, which caused damage by impairing the integrity and availability of data on websites belonging to the Church of Scientology, which caused loss to one or more persons of $5,000.

Anonymous began its official protest against the Church of Scientology at the beginning of this year, when they directed a DDOS attack to the church’s website, forcing them to move it to a new server. The church felt the need to respond, and posted a video on how Anonymous was allegedly instigating to hate crimes against the church and its members.

The group of vigilantes, which the church called “cyber-terrorists,” has created a worldwide movement, and has since organized public protests against the church in cities across the globe, also promising not to rest until they accomplish three main purposes: save people from Scientology by reversing their brainwashing, cause current Scientologists to doubt their religion, and obtain epic and memorable lulz.

The situation got to a point where it may not be as funny for Anonymous anymore, especially, as they’re trying hard to reconstruct their website, but that doesn’t seem to stop them. The authorities are still finding it hard to expose the members of the group, especially since the group itself appears to have no leader, but mere just volunteers.

Both Anonymous and the church have arguments against each other. The church obviously feels threatened by Anonymous’ protests, but at the same time, is not willing to respond to many of the questions asked about them, such as why or how did the church get the tax-exempt status; the church also denies claims by former employees about “recruiting” Hollywood stars to promote the church even more.

In March this year, the Church of Scientology even filed a petition to a judge, alleging acts of vandalism on its churches from “Anonymous members,” requesting a ban to stop the members of the Anonymous group from getting closer than 500 feet of any of the Scientology buildings.

Unfortunately for the church, the claim was not only strange – putting a ban on a group of unknown people was clearly impossible – but was also in contradiction with what the Anonymous members had done, which is peacefully protest against  the Church.

“The Church of Scientology is attempting to suppress the unalienable rights of United States citizens,” Anonymous said at the time. “This demonstrates once again that Church of Scientology leaders do not wish to operate in an environment where free speech is permitted.”

The authorities will continue investigation in the hacking case. Most recently, the Anonymous group was also connected to another famous hack, that of presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s email, when they posted the content of her e-mails on line. Authorities charged 20-year-old David Kernell in this case.