The conversation covers the tracking of Anonymous and other splinter groups, dates of planned arrests and details of evidence held by police. Anonymous also published an email from the FBI, showing the email addresses of call participants. The FBI confirmed the intercept and said it was hunting those responsible.
The loose-knit hacking movement “Anonymous” claimed Sunday to have stolen thousands of credit card numbers and other personal information belonging to clients of U.S.-based security think tank Stratfor. One hacker said the goal was to pilfer funds from individuals’ accounts to give away as Christmas donations, and some victims confirmed unauthorized transactions linked to their credit cards.
Anonymous boasted of stealing Stratfor’s confidential client list, which includes entities ranging from Apple Inc. to the U.S. Air Force to the Miami Police Department, and mining it for more than 4,000 credit card numbers, passwords and home addresses.
“Not so private and secret anymore?” Anonymous taunted in a message on Twitter, promising that the attack on Stratfor was just the beginning of a Christmas-inspired assault on a long list of targets.
Anonymous said the client list it had already posted was a small slice of the 200 gigabytes worth of plunder it stole from Stratfor and promised more leaks. It said it was able to get the credit card details in part because Stratfor didn’t bother encrypting them — an easy-to-avoid blunder which, if true, would be a major embarrassment for any security-related company.
Fred Burton, Stratfor’s vice president of intelligence, said the company had reported the intrusion to law enforcement and was working with them on the investigation.
Stratfor has protections in place meant to prevent such attacks, he said.
“But I think the hackers live in this kind of world where once they fixate on you or try to attack you it’s extraordinarily difficult to defend against,” Burton said.
Hours after publishing what it claimed was Stratfor’s client list, Anonymous tweeted a link to encrypted files online with names, phone numbers, emails, addresses and credit card account details.
“Not as many as you expected? Worry not, fellow pirates and robin hoods. These are just the ‘A’s,” read a message posted online that encouraged readers to download a file of the hacked information.
The attack is “just another in a massive string of breaches we’ve seen this year and in years past,” said Josh Shaul, chief technology officer of Application Security Inc., a New York-based provider of database security software.
Still, companies that shared secret information with Stratfor in order to obtain threat assessments might worry that the information is among the 200 gigabytes of data that Anonymous claims to have stolen, he said.
“If an attacker is walking away with that much email, there might be some very juicy bits of information that they have,” Shaul said.
Lt. Col. John Dorrian, public affairs officer for the Air Force, said that “for obvious reasons” the Air Force doesn’t discuss specific vulnerabilities, threats or responses to them.
“The Air Force will continue to monitor the situation and, as always, take appropriate action as necessary to protect Air Force networks and information,” he said in an email.
Miami Police Department spokesman Sgt. Freddie Cruz Jr. said that he could not confirm that the agency was a client of Stratfor, and he said he had not received any information about a security breach involving the police department.
Anonymous also linked to images online that it suggested were receipts for charitable donations made by the group manipulating the credit card data it stole.
“Thank you! Defense Intelligence Agency,” read the text above one image that appeared to show a transaction summary indicating that an agency employee’s information was used to donate $250 to a nonprofit.
One receipt — to the American Red Cross — had Allen Barr’s name on it.
Barr, of Austin, Texas, recently retired from the Texas Department of Banking and said he discovered last Friday that a total of $700 had been spent from his account. Barr, who has spent more than a decade dealing with cybercrime at banks, said five transactions were made in total.
“It was all charities, the Red Cross, CARE, Save the Children. So when the credit card company called my wife she wasn’t sure whether I was just donating,” said Barr, who wasn’t aware until a reporter with the AP called that his information had been compromised when Stratfor’s computers were hacked.
“It made me feel terrible. It made my wife feel terrible. We had to close the account.”
Wishing everyone a “Merry LulzXMas” — a nod to its spinoff hacking group Lulz Security — Anonymous also posted a link on Twitter to a site containing the email, phone number and credit number of a U.S. Homeland Security employee.
The employee, Cody Sultenfuss, said he had no warning before his details were posted.
“They took money I did not have,” he told The Associated Press in a series of emails, which did not specify the amount taken. “I think ‘Why me?’ I am not rich.”
But the breach doesn’t necessarily pose a risk to owners of the credit cards. A card user who suspects fraudulent activity on his or her card can contact the credit card company to dispute the charge.
Stratfor said in an email to members, signed by Stratfor Chief Executive George Friedman and passed on to AP by subscribers, that it had hired a “leading identity theft protection and monitoring service” on behalf of the Stratfor members affected by the attack. The company said it will send another email on services for affected members by Wednesday.
Stratfor acknowledged that an “unauthorized party” had revealed personal information and credit card data of some of its members.
The company had sent another email to subscribers earlier in the day saying it had suspended its servers and email after learning that its website had been hacked.
One member of the hacking group, who uses the handle AnonymousAbu on Twitter, claimed that more than 90,000 credit cards from law enforcement, the intelligence community and journalists — “corporate/exec accounts of people like Fox” News — had been hacked and used to “steal a million dollars” and make donations.
On Thursday November 17th, the two month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, we call upon the 99% to participate in a national day of direct action and celebration!
New York City Schedule SHUT DOWN WALL STREET! - 7:00 a.m.
Enough of this economy that exploits and divides us. It's time we put an end to Wall Street's reign of terror and begin building an economy that works for all. We will gather in Liberty Square at 7:00 a.m., before the ring of the Trading Floor Bell, to prepare to confront Wall Street with the stories of people on the frontlines of economic injustice. There, before the Stock Exchange, we will exchange stories rather than stocks.
OCCUPY THE SUBWAYS!- 3:00 p.m.
We will start by Occupying Our Blocks! Then throughout the five boroughs, we will gather at 16 central subway hubs and take our own stories to the trains, using the "People's Mic".
Bronx
Fordham Rd
3rd Ave, 138th Street
163rd and Southern Blvd
161st and River - Yankee Stadium
Brooklyn
Broadway Junction
Borough Hall
301 Grove Street
St Jose Patron Church,185 Suydam St, Bushwick
Queens
Jackson Heights/Roosevelt Ave.
Jamaica Center/Parsons/Archer
92-10 Roosevelt Avenue, Jackson Heights
Manhattan
125th St. A,B,C,D
Union Sq. (Mass student strike)
23rd St and 8th Ave
Staten Island
St. George, Staten Island Ferry Terminal
479 Port Richmond Avenue, Port Richmond
TAKE THE SQUARE! - 5:00 p.m.
At 5 pm, tens of thousands of people will gather at Foley Square (just across from City Hall) in solidarity with laborers demanding jobs to rebuild this country's infrastructure and economy. A gospel choir and a marching band will also be performing.
Afterwards we will march to our bridges. Let's make it as musical a march as possible - bring your songs, your voice, your spirit! Our "Musical" on the bridge will culminate in a festival of light as we mark the two-month anniversary of the #occupy movement, and our commitment to shining light into our broken economic and political system.
Resist austerity. Rebuild the economy. Reclaim our democracy.
Push came to shove, and we shoved hard. Millions of voices around the world were heard as hundreds of thousands of people closed out bank accounts starting in October and pushing through with strong and loud protests in solidarity with Occupy Wall Streets around the world, to Nov 5th. The word is between 700k and 1 million people closed out their big bank accounts. that is amazing, look at the power you all have alone and look at what we have done together. What a statement. And not for long can the governments of the world keep ignoring us.
But now is when we have to keep pushing, and pushing hard. For those people who have moved accounts, you need to do more, you need to get involved with your credit union and make it count, make this move more then just a statement that your money belongs to you, really make your money work for you, congratulations are in order for all of you credit union members, you now control your money completely, you are now an owner and have a vote in what goes on at your bank, YOU can sit on your board of directors for your bank, why? Because your money is there. It doesn’t matter if you have 50 dollars or 5000 dollars in an account, you are all equal in the say of what goes on in that bank.
For those of you who have moved money, now is the time to educate those who have not done it and may be hesitant, you are the teachers now, the path makers, the world changers! We cannot faulter our brother and sisters who are out on the Occupy lines dealing with just the begginings of some harsh winter weather. We need to push Operation Cash Back until the majority of the population of people are with credit unions and the minority is the big banks. Do not think it cant be done, look at what we have already accomplished, we do not faulter in our actions, we do not hesitate in our words. This moment is far to big to just let the pressure ease, we must be louder and stronger and more forceful with our words then ever before.
The 5th of November will have a new meaning tomorrow.
The meaning of Solidarity.
Tomorrow, We will be releasing information; starting at 9 am eastern and ending at 9 pm eastern. This will be done In solidarity with the world wide Occupy Wall Street movement, Operation Bank transfer day, Operation Cash out, and every other Operation that will take place tomorrow.
Stay alert, stay aware, grab some popcorn, and enjoy the ride.
We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We are The Cabin. Expect us.
All Operations will begin at 9AM EST and end at 9PM EST.
Breaking from its support for the Occupy movement, the hacker cell of Anonymous has issued a statement attacking UK authorities' decision to extradite Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, leading to speculation of a possible revenge attack by the hacktivist collective.
Anonymous issued its first statement via its AnonOpsTwitter feed. "Julian needs all of our help. Spread the Word! We will not forgive or forget. EXPECT US!" read AnonOps' initial tweet.
Despite being a call-to-arms asking for donations to help fund Assange's legal fees, the addition of the group's standard "We will not forgive or forget. EXPECT US" rhetoric has since led to concerns that the collective may mount a revenge attack to protest the court's decision.
Anonymous' statement came after Lord Justice Thomas and Justice Ouseley rejected Assange's lawyers claims that extraditing the 40-year-old Australian would be "unfair and unlawful."
The decision means that Assange will be forced to return to Sweden Wednesday to answer accusations of raping one woman and "sexually molesting and coercing" another in Stockholm.
Assange's lawyers have since clarified their intent to appeal the decision at the Supreme Court.
The accusations against Assange were initially mounted in August 2010. Assange has since vehemently denied the charges, suggesting they are a politically motivated plot against him.
Anonymous' latest statement comes as a part of its ongoing support for Wikileaks. Prior to its latest statement, alongside LulzSec, the collective had spear-headed a boycott against PayPal's parent company eBay, in part for its decision to cut payments to Wikileaks.
Though Anonymous has not overtly threatened UK authorities with revenge cyber attacks such behaviour would be consistent with its past exploits.
Previously the collective had enacted revenge hacks and distributed denial of service attacks against a number of governments and companies for what it perceived as crimes against the general public.
These crimes had included everything from reform policies that could monitor or censor the internet, to law enforcement agencies arresting alleged Anonymous members.
And we are what democracy looks like. We do not fear your power and we will continue to fight for a better world. We will never stop growing and each day we'll continue to expand, block by block and city by city. We call upon others to join us, to take a stand against these ever encroaching threats to our liberty. We commend the brave actions of our sisters and brothers in Boston and condemn the BPD leadership. We call upon the rank-and-file police officers of this country to disobey such orders and remember that they protect and serve the people. You are one of us, the 99% and we're too big to fail.
Anonymous, the loosely-organized group of computer hackers that has taken credit for many of the world's most visible protests, has threatened to "erase" the New York Stock Exchange from the Internet today.
The streets of downtown Manhattan have been crowded for several weeks now with members of the Occupy Wall Street movement, who say they're protesting corporate greed. Last week an online message purportedly posted by Anonymous said the protest would spread to a hacking attack.
Wall Street shrugged off the threat this morning as the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose more than 250 points at the open.
A threat was first made on Oct. 5, as demonstrators massed on the streets in lower Manhattan. But a YouTube message posted shortly after that said, "Anonymous wouldn't attack NYSE on a HOLIDAY -- it is debatable if Anonymous would ever even attack NYSE."
However, a YouTube video posted on Saturday, using a computer-generated voice, said, "Many people refuse to accept that Operation Invade Wall Street is a reality. ... I am here to clarify that factions of Anonymous are going with the operation. Other factions are opposing it."
The voice, flat and idiomatic, concluded, "Those who are going to be part of the attack have a message to the NYSE: We have you because we don't like you. We are all anonymous. We are all one legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. NYSE, expect those of us who plan to destroy you."
Anonymous has previously taken credit for hacking attacks on Bank of America, Sony's PlayStation network and other companies. It was unclear whether the online threat intended to interfere with stock trading, or do anything to the homepage of NYSE Euronext, the parent company of the stock exchange.
Ray Pellecchia, a spokesman for NYSE Euronext, said, "We don't comment on security." Separately, a source said the exchange was functioning normally.
OSLO, Norway (AP) — Arab Spring or European Union? Speculation ahead of the Nobel Peace Prize announcement on Friday is split after cryptic comments by the award committee's chairman.
Thorbjoern Jagland, General Secretary of the Council of Europe and Norwegian chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize award committee gestures during an interview with the Associated Press at his office at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, eastern France, Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011. Jagland says his panel has already decided on its laureate for this year and he is confident that the selection will be well-received. (AP Photo/Christian Lutz)
Many Nobel watchers have seen the revolutions against autocratic regimes in North Africa and the Middle East as the most likely subject of this year's prize. An American
professor who wrote a guide to nonviolent protests was a bookmaker's favorite Thursday.
But Norway's TV2 expected the prize to go to Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, while remarks by Thorbjoern Jagland, who has led the five-member Norwegian panel
since 2009, have fueled speculation the prize could go to the EU.
Even though Norway is not a member, Jagland is a strong supporter of the 27-nation bloc, which many consider a peace-building project as much as an economic union.
In 1990, Jagland wrote a book titled "My European dream" about European unity following the collapse of the Iron Curtain. Aside from his Nobel duties he serves as
secretary-general of the Council of Europe, a European human rights organization that is separate from the EU.
Jagland told The Associated Press this week that the prize — decided last Friday — would go to something "obvious" that he considered "the most positive development" in the world right now.
On Thursday he told Norwegian newspaper VG that this year's winner "is involved with something that has been important to me my whole life."
In several interviews he's suggested that Norwegian media are looking in the wrong places — and most of them have speculated about the award going to someone linked to the Arab Spring.
The deadline for nominations was Feb. 1, and committee members could add their own suggestions until Feb. 28. Jagland told AP that was "not necessarily" too late for consideration of leaders of the Arab Spring revolutions, which toppled regimes in Tunisia in January and Egypt in February.
But he added "that doesn't mean that the prize goes in that direction, because there are many other positive developments in the world."
The EU, or some institution within it, could be a strong candidate if the committee views the prize as a booster shot, like it had intended with the 2009 award to Barack Obama in the first year of his presidency.
The European debt crisis has put the bloc under heavy pressure, with Greece, Portugal and Ireland needing bailouts from international creditors including other nations in the 17-nation eurozone that uses the common euro currency.
But Sverre Lodgaard, a deputy member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee who didn't take part in its deliberations, told reporters Wednesday that he didn't believe in an EU award because it's a divisive issue in Norway.
Leading Nobel-guesser Kristian Berg Harpviken, the director of the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, also doubted that the EU would get the prize.
His top picks are Egyptian activists Israa Abdel Fattah, Ahmed Maher and the April 6 Youth Movement, a pro-democracy Facebook group they co-founded in 2008.
He also suggested Wael Ghonim, a marketing executive for Google, for re-energizing the protests on Cairo's Tahrir Square after the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, and
Tunisian blogger Lina Ben Mhenni who started criticizing the Tunisian regime before the uprising began in December.
Another candidate could be Turkey's Foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Harpviken said, to honor Turkish peace efforts "as a bridge builder between east and west."
Betting site paddypower.com gave the lowest odds Thursday to retired American scholar Gene Sharp, whose writings on nonviolent resistance are believed to have inspired some protesters in the Arab world. The second-lowest odds were given to Afghan human rights activist Sima Samar, a recurring name in Nobel speculation over the years.
Others getting bets include the Russian human rights organization Memorial and its founder Svetlana Gannushkina, and the social networking site Facebook.
Norway's TV2 predicted that Johnson Sirleaf would get the prize for promoting peace, democracy and economic growth in her country and advocating for women's rights at the U.N.
Source: Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
As many of you are aware, over the past several days, significant demonstrations have been held in protest of the corrupt financial system that favors the richest 1% of our nation; while the remaining 99% have to deal with things such as abuse of our civil rights, overseas outsourcing of our jobs, and living off minimum wage while gas hovers around $3.50 a gallon. The minimal attention given to these demonstrations has caused growing concern, with rumors of media blackouts and repealed news coverage becoming increasingly harder to deny.
We would like to thank those in our national media that chose to cover the truth about the events of the wall street occupation. Your contribution to society will not go unrecognized.
Unfortunately, this coverage has not been sufficient, we must now take efforts to spread the truth into our own hands. It is now up to us, the people of this great nation, to act for ourselves. We must share the truth through our social networks, by texting, instant/private messaging, posting, and blogging to our friends and relatives. We must take to the streets and speak of the truth in our coffee shops and mall outlets. Our voices will be heard.
Bloggers, dedicate your blogs to Occupy Wall Street,
Website owners, Write an article about Occupy Wall Street,
People in urban areas, Pass out and post up flyers about Occupy Wall Street,
Social network users, Flood your twitter accounts with OccupyWallStreet hashtags, post videos, articles, and any news about Occupy Wall Street.
Share this call to action, and encourage others to do the same.
To those currently occupying, stay strong, always know that you have our support.
We will not allow tyrannical police to oppress and bully you. Stay peaceful, stay vigilant, and know that you are making our nation proud.
To the police who wish to remain tyrannical, we will continue to show our support for the peaceful protesters. You will be exposed for the inhumane offences you commit, and everyone will know just who you are and what you have done. Your information will be posted everywhere and mirrored everywhere.
If you strip the freedom away from our peaceful protestors, then we shall strip your privacy away from you.
The digital vigilante groups Anonymous and LulzSec, it seems, plan to teach News Corp. a thing or two about hacking.
Just a day after the arrest of Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of New Corp.’s British subsidiary and editor of its The Sun newspaper for phone hacking charges, the hacker groups took credit Monday for defacing the paper’s website to redirect to a fake homepage (archived here) that claimed its owner, News Corp. chief executive Rupert Murdoch, had died of a drug overdose.
Worse may be ahead for the The Sun than mere graffiti: A hacker who goes by the handle Sabu claims that the hacker groups had also accessed The Sun‘s and defunct sister paper News Of The World’s emails, and may release them in coming days. “Sun/News of the world OWNED,” he writes. “We’re sitting on their emails. Press release tomorrow.”
Sabu and other Anonymous-related twitter feeds followed by twittering email addresses and passwords for Rebekah Brooks and Bill Akass, an editor who has held positions at The Sun and News of the World, and Danny Rogers, currently online editor at The Sun.
“We have owned Sun/News of the World,” added a tweet from LulzSec, the hacker group that went on a hacking spree targeting the CIA, Sony and PBS earlier this year only to supposedly disband last month. “That story is simply phase 1 – expect the lulz to flow in coming days.”
Despite countless WikiLeaks copycats popping up since the secret-spilling site first dumped its cache of State Department cables last year, the new generation of leaking sites has produced few WikiLeaks-sized scoops. So instead of waiting for insider whistleblowers, the hacker movement Anonymous hopes that a few outside intruders might start the leaks flowing.
Earlier this week members of the hacker collective, and specifically a sub-group known as the People’s Liberation Front, (PLF) launched two new leaking sites, LocalLeaks.tk (not to be confused with the similarly named Localeaks.com) and HackerLeaks.tk. Both hope to receive documents through an anonymous submissions channel, analyze them, and then distribute them to the press to get “maximum exposure and political impact.”
But while LocalLeaks aims to use WikiLeaks’ model of insider sources to expose corruption on the local scale, HackerLeaks openly invites data thieves to upload documents through its submission system, so that they can be analyzed and publicized. “You download it, we’ll disclose it for you,” the site’s homepage reads, listing potential booty such as “databases, exploits, security flaws, documents, and email spools.”
On Tuesday, according to one of the hackers involved who goes by the name Commander X, the leaking site got its first submission: a list of the personal details of Orlando officials including addresses, home values, incomes and other data. That “leak,” which Commander X says was submitted anonymously to HackerLeaks but was posted, confusingly, on LocalLeaks, comes as Anonymous has been engaged in what it calls “Operation Orlando.” Since early Tuesday hackers have been launching attacks on Orlando-based targets including OrlandoFloridaGuide.com and the websites of the Orlando Chamber of Commerce and Universal Studios in retaliation for arrests of Orlando workers for the non-profit Food Not Bombs who lacked permits.
“These are the folks that wrote and are enforcing a very brutal law against very poor people,” Commander X, who says he is serving as the current “editor in chief” of the two sites, wrote to me over instant message. ”They themselves appear to be very very rich, so we thought we would point that out.”
And why is a leaking site necessary for hackers, who have lately used sites like Pastebin to publish information on their own? Commander X argues that Anonymous and the PLF have already established connections to the media outlets that can help better expose important data, and that they hope to also provide “unique and enlightening analysis.”
“We just wanted to make our own offering, compete in the disclosure marketplace and maybe fill a unique role if we can,” writes Commander X. He argues that part of that unique role is that HackerLeaks will be legal, despite publishing hacked materials. “We don’t obtain this material. We merely publish it. This violates no sane law anywhere.”
That’s an argument that sounds much like the one used by WikiLeaks, which has also published hacked data including Sarah Palin’s stolen emails and East Anglia University’s hacked emails related to climate change.
But that legal stance may be a tough sell for Commander X. Although he refused to comment on whether he had engaged directly in illegal hacking, he describes himself as “field commander of a global cyber militia” and says that he has had some part in Anonymous operations that have involved attacks on Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal in retaliation for their severing ties with WikiLeaks, as well as attacks on the governments of Tunisia, Iran, and Egypt.
Commander X was also named by HBGary Federal chief executive Aaron Barr in a planned presentation that aimed to out Anonymous’ leaders. But Barr misidentified the Anonymous hacker, who tells me he is a “50ish” American, as Ben De Vries, the founder of a Facebook group called Global Strike 2011. Barr’s digging incited Anonymous to attack HBGary Federal, dumping thousands of its emails in February on a site called AnonLeaks, Anonymous’ first experimentation with a WikiLeaks-like interface. Barr resigned later that month. Commander X says he wasn’t involved in the HBGary hack.
Commander X’s subgroup of Anonymous isn’t the only one that’s getting into the leaking game. The last release from the hacker group LulzSec included half a gigabyte of data from AT&T that has been reported to have come from an insider source at the company.
As part of its ongoing campaign known as AntiSec, aimed at exposing corporate and government data and humiliating security firms, one Anonymous twitter feed suggested earlier this week that leakers contact the group over IRC to spill insider secrets: “If you are working for a corrupt government/company,” wrote one Anonymous twitterer, “Leak the data.”
“Not so private and secret anymore?” Anonymous taunted in a message on Twitter, promising that the attack on Stratfor was just the beginning of a Christmas-inspired assault on a long list of targets.
On Thursday November 17th, the two month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement, we call upon the 99% to participate in a national day of direct action and celebration!
