The “hacktivist” organization Anonymous Operations posted some 90,000 military e-mail addresses and passwords, to the Pirate Bay torrent website on July 11, in what they called “Military Meltdown Monday."The organization hacked into the networks of government contracting and consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, where they claim to have discovered “a list of roughly 90,000 military e-mails and password hashes ... 4gb of source code,” and “maps and keys for various other treasure chests buried on the islands of government agencies, federal contractors and shady whitehat companies.”
Anonymous further claims that Booz Allen was involved with several government surveillance and intelligence-gathering programs “that may be deemed illegal” and insinuate that several of Booz Allen’s executives, all former members of the Nation Security Agency, garnered illegal government favor in their private business efforts.
Anonymous preceded the release with multiple lead-up tweets from several of their affiliated twitter accounts. One account, “anonymouSabu,” formerly part of the LulzSec hacking group, claims that this is the first of “two of the biggest releases for Anonymous in the last 4 years,” and sent a warning to the intelligence community, stating “Everyone brace. This is literally explosive.”
Another account, “YourAnonNews”, states that “today’s #AntiSec release will without any doubt be the biggest release so far.”
“AntiSec” or operation Anti-Security, was a collaborative effort between hacker groups LulzSec, Anonymous, and various others to attack and steal confidential information from major governments and corporations, and expose perceived corruption and abuse of power. LulzSec disbanded in late June, its members reintegrating with their original foundations in Anonymous.
The websites and networks of numerous companies and government organizations have already been attacked in the name of AntiSec. Anonymous believes that their efforts are simply a form of civil disobedience, calling their tactics “peaceful protest." The government, meanwhile, has been actively trying to track down and arrest its members.
Anonymous made headlines last year when they attacked MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal after the companies had suspended payments directed to the information leaking website WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange.
No comments:
Post a Comment