Thursday, February 23, 2012
CIA website down, Anonymous takes credit
From The Hindu
While the Occupy movement has relied primarily on peaceful protest marches to highlight post-recession income inequality in the United States, recent months have made clear that the rise of the American left is a double edged sword and a darker, angrier sub-group of the movement is willing to take on authorities more aggressively.
After its first high profile Christmas-weekend attack against Texas-based security firm Stratfor, which resulted in the exposure of the company’s global blue-chip clientele list, this rebel group of “hacktivists” called Anonymous brought down a much larger prey on Friday – the Central Intelligence Agency.
All through Friday afternoon and evening the website of the U.S.’ top intelligence agency only showed an error message and even on early Saturday morning this correspondent could not log onto the page. Simultaneously Anonymous announced via its Twitter pages and Tumblr feed that the Central Intelligence Agency's website had been taken down.
The modus operandi was likely to be a distributed denial-of-service attack and, referencing this, a Twitter posting by Anonymous-linked account noted, “We’d remind media that if we report a hack or DDOS attack, it doesn't necessarily mean we did it... FYI”
Another posting read: “CIA TANGO DOWN: https://www.cia.gov/ #Anonymous.” Others referenced news story highlighting the alleged takedown. Reports quoted CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood saying on Friday night, “We are aware of the problems accessing our website, and are working to resolve them.”
And it was not only the CIA. The U.S. state of Alabama came under a hack-attack too, and a website identified by CNN to included Anonymous' signature tag line said that the action was Anonymous’ response to “Alabama's recent racist legislation in an attempt to punish immigrants as criminals.”
Alabama last summer joined with Arizona and others in passing unprecedentedly stringent immigration laws, including granting local police sweeping powers to conduct stop-and-search operations and measures to ramp up the pace of deportation of suspected illegal immigrants.
A third target selected in Friday’s attack was Mexico's Mining Ministry. An Anonymous-linked Twitter page supplied links to documents and messages that it said it had taken off a website tied to the Ministry. Reports quoted a related Twitter post from Anonymous saying, “Hello Mexican Chamber of Mines. Want to see your emails exposed?”
Inexplicably, Friday also witnessed a hacker group using the nickname “Casi” taking credit for hacking the United Nations website and reportedly releasing vulnerabilities on the site. It was unclear why the UN was targeted, although it may have been an unrelated attack given the absence of Anonymous’ now-famous signature message: “We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.”
While the Occupy movement has relied primarily on peaceful protest marches to highlight post-recession income inequality in the United States, recent months have made clear that the rise of the American left is a double edged sword and a darker, angrier sub-group of the movement is willing to take on authorities more aggressively.
After its first high profile Christmas-weekend attack against Texas-based security firm Stratfor, which resulted in the exposure of the company’s global blue-chip clientele list, this rebel group of “hacktivists” called Anonymous brought down a much larger prey on Friday – the Central Intelligence Agency.
All through Friday afternoon and evening the website of the U.S.’ top intelligence agency only showed an error message and even on early Saturday morning this correspondent could not log onto the page. Simultaneously Anonymous announced via its Twitter pages and Tumblr feed that the Central Intelligence Agency's website had been taken down.
The modus operandi was likely to be a distributed denial-of-service attack and, referencing this, a Twitter posting by Anonymous-linked account noted, “We’d remind media that if we report a hack or DDOS attack, it doesn't necessarily mean we did it... FYI”
Another posting read: “CIA TANGO DOWN: https://www.cia.gov/ #Anonymous.” Others referenced news story highlighting the alleged takedown. Reports quoted CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood saying on Friday night, “We are aware of the problems accessing our website, and are working to resolve them.”
And it was not only the CIA. The U.S. state of Alabama came under a hack-attack too, and a website identified by CNN to included Anonymous' signature tag line said that the action was Anonymous’ response to “Alabama's recent racist legislation in an attempt to punish immigrants as criminals.”
Alabama last summer joined with Arizona and others in passing unprecedentedly stringent immigration laws, including granting local police sweeping powers to conduct stop-and-search operations and measures to ramp up the pace of deportation of suspected illegal immigrants.
A third target selected in Friday’s attack was Mexico's Mining Ministry. An Anonymous-linked Twitter page supplied links to documents and messages that it said it had taken off a website tied to the Ministry. Reports quoted a related Twitter post from Anonymous saying, “Hello Mexican Chamber of Mines. Want to see your emails exposed?”
Inexplicably, Friday also witnessed a hacker group using the nickname “Casi” taking credit for hacking the United Nations website and reportedly releasing vulnerabilities on the site. It was unclear why the UN was targeted, although it may have been an unrelated attack given the absence of Anonymous’ now-famous signature message: “We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.”
Labels: Anonymous, CIA, Hacking activities, Occuption movement, USA, Website
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Hacktivists post security firm private data online
From The Hindu
It reads like a list of all the companies that the Occupy Wall
Street Movement would target. Over the Christmas weekend a self-fashioned
Robin-Hood-style group of internet activists called Anonymous hacked into the
databases of a Texas-based security firm and posted a list of over 4,000
customers of the firm along with their private information on the Internet.
Assuming the list is genuine it would appear that the firm, called
Stratfor, provided global intelligence reports to major banks and consulting
firms, airlines, mining companies, communications giants, software majors and
weapons manufacturers among others. Stratfor, which operates out of Austin,
Texas, only noted that its website was, “currently undergoing maintenance.”
In response to a query from The Hindu a Stratfor
representative said, “Unfortunately, we can't give any more info beyond what
we've sent out to our members. We're dealing with an ongoing law enforcement
investigation and figuring out who, what, how, etc. I'm really sorry I can't do
more - my hands are tied.”
However Stratfor did supply the statement that its management
issued to its members, including a comment from Stratfor official George
Friedman, who apologised for the “unfortunate incident, saying, “On December
24th an unauthorized party disclosed personally identifiable information and
related credit card data of some of our members. We have reason to believe that
your personal and credit card data could have been included in the information
that was illegally obtained and disclosed.”
Mr. Friedman confirmed that as part of the publicly released data
was “a list of our members;” however he disputed the claim of the “unauthorised
party” that that list included Stratfor's private clients. “Contrary to this
assertion the disclosure was merely a list of some of the members that have
purchased our publications and does not comprise a list of individuals or
entities that have a relationship with Stratfor beyond their purchase of our
subscription-based publications,” Mr. Friedman said.
Following the posting, which included credit card numbers and
passwords, hackers were quoted as saying that “The goal was to pilfer funds from
individuals' accounts to give away as Christmas donations,” and some purported
victims had confirmed that unauthorised transactions linked to their credit
cards had taken place.
On its Twitter account, where Anonymous posted the full Stratfor
list, the “hacktivist” group said, “Not so private and secret anymore?”
Anonymous further hinted that it had been able to break into the Stratfor system
because Stratfor had failed to encrypt private data.
Suggesting that only a “small slice of the 200 gigabytes worth” of
data it obtained from Stratforwas online, it promised further leaks.
In what will no doubt be a closely-watched development Anonymous
said in a statement to media via its Twitter account that it would “pick up the
pace of releasing peoples' credit card information.”
The group asked, “How does a drop of 30,000 additional names,
credit cards, addresses, phone numbers... hashed passwords sound? Sounds like a
financial calamity to us. And just as the markets in the U.S. are opening after
the holiday weekend? Might be trouble.” It added that on Tuesday it would reveal
the entire customer database from an online military and law enforcement supply
store.
Both offering a way out and indicating where its sympathies lay,
the group however said, “This could all be averted. Have you given our comrade
Bradley Manning his holiday feast yet, at a fancy restaurant of his choosing?
Better make it happen, captain.”
Anonymous' Twitter account is @AnonymousIRC and it has posted data
at http://pastebin.com/8MtFze0s
Labels: Anonymous, hackers, hacktivism, online security, private information
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