Another Friday, Another Dump

Last Updated on October 22, 2011

Anonymous and Antisec broke their apparent October silence and renewed the tradition of the Friday Dumps against law enforcement agencies releasing a 600MB data dump of confidential data belonging to Law enforcement agencies.

According to the original statement, no more available on pastebin:

In solidarity with the Occupation Movement and the International Day of Action Against Police Brutality, allied #anonymous and #antisec vessels took aim at the corrupt bootboys of the 1%: the police. We hacked, defaced, and destroyed several law enforcement targets, leaking over 600MB of private information including internal documents, membership rosters, addresses, passwords, social security numbers, and other confidential data. According to the IACP’s development documents, their systems cost several hundred thousand dollars. We are pleased to destroy it all for free, leaking their private info and defacing their websites in one swift blow.

Victims of the attack include: the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association (BPPA) and the Baldwin County Sheriff’s office in Alabama.

As part of the raid, Antisec hackers compromised webservers used by Matrix Group, a web development firm located in Arlington, VA (the latest example of a Contractor hacked), boasting several law enforcement and government clients. The attack on Matrix Group led to the removal of dozens of websites from the Internet, and several other defacements (with an anti-police rap video) even if unrelated sites on their servers were intentionally excluded from the attack. The defacements included Matrix Group information including sever logs and history files, financial data, client lists, and project information. The leaked 600MB of private information include internal documents, membership rosters, addresses, passwords, social security numbers, and other confidential data.

The attack, probably performed by mean of SQL Injection, was performed in support of the so-called 99% movement, a reference to the Occupy Wall Street protests spreading around the world (and comprising the 99% of the population), particularly in Boston, and also in solidarity with the dozens of alleged “Anonymous” members around the world facing charges for “hacking”.

If one does not consider the alleged threats and hacking attempts against Thomas Ryan, an independent security consultant who released a trove of e-mail communications from the Occupy Wall Street protesters, this is the second circumstance in which Anonymous backs the OccupyWallStreet movement with a direct hacking action (after the doxing of the “Pepper Spray Officer), even if in this case the size of the operation is quite huge, resembling the attacks perpetrated against BART at the end of August.

Is the World going to face another massive wave of hactivism motivated data dumps?