We posted a story on 12/29/11 about the hacking group “Anonymous” boasting they had stolen 200 gigabytes worth of information from Stratfor – a U.S. based Security Think Tank. The stolen information obtained in the hacking incident included credit card numbers, passwords and home addresses.
Anonymous had made good on its threat and dumped 200 GB of names, email addresses and passwords for around 860,000 Stratfor users. Anonymous also exposed credit card numbers for 75,000 paying customers of Stratfor.
Stratfor’s services consist of providing reports on international security and related threats to government and military personnel as well as to the private sector. It is unknown whether Anonymous gained access to other, more sensitive information during the Stratfor hacks, which occurred on December 24.
The group posted the following ominous threat on Pastebin: “The time for talk is over.” “It’s time to dump the full 75,000 names, addresses, CCs and md5 hashed passwords to every customer that has ever paid Stratfor. But that’s not all: we’re also dumping ~860,000 usernames, email addresses, and md5 hashed passwords for everyone who’s ever registered on Stratfor’s site… Did you notice 50,000 of these email addresses are .mil and .gov?”
In its statement, representatives of the movement also wrote, “All our lives we have been robbed blindly and brutalized by corrupted politicians, establishmentarians and government agencies sex shops, and now it’s time to take it back.”
In addition to “noise demonstrations” outside of jails and prisons, presumably to show solidarity and support for the incarcerated, Anonymous says it will unveil “our contributions to project mayhem by attacking multiple law enforcement targets from coast to coast.”
Project Mayhem, a name taken from the book and film Fight Club, alludes the group’s desire to topple (or at least shake up) systems of capitalistic and political power by exposing certain types of information by or on December 12, 2012.
Stratfor’s site has been offline since the December 24 hacking incident. The firm has delayed its website relaunch because of the hack.
“As part of our ongoing investigation, we have also decided to delay the launching of our website until a thorough review and adjustment by outside experts can be completed,” the company said in an email to VentureBeat earlier this week.
The possibility of a cyber-attack is very frightening, particularly because current laws have not kept pace with technological advancements – specifically jurisdictional boundaries, rules of evidence, and forensic storage. It could truly be mayhem if such a wide-spread attack is launched.
If you suspect your network or computers are potential targets for hacking, MSI Detective Services is skilled at performing Computer Forensic Analysis, Debugging – Bug Sweeps and Electronic Countermeasure Sweeps. MSI can detect if there has been a breach and provide you with the tools to protect your personal data.
Sources: Blog Spot and The Washington Post
