Anonymous at it again: Defense contractor hacked
Individuals appearing in public as Anonymous, wearing the Guy Fawkes masks popularized by the comic book and film V for Vendetta, Los Angeles, February 2008. / Wikipedia
LONDON — Members of the online activist group Anonymous stole tens of thousands of encrypted military passwords from U.S. contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and posted them to the Web, the hackers said Monday.
Although the passwords had all been encrypted and didn't appear to be geared toward email access, many examined by The Associated Press seemed easily breakable and might conceivably be used to hack into military inboxes.
Chris Palmer of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said those exposed by the leak "should probably be changing their passwords urgently."
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In a statement posted to the Web, the Anonymous hackers boasted of stealing passwords linked to some 90,000 military users, although The Associated Press counted only about 67,000 unique email addresses, of which about 53,000 carried ".mil" domains.
The rest appeared to be affiliated with educational institutions or defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin Corp. or SAIC.
The Pentagon said in a statement that it was aware of the incident and coordinating with other federal partners on the matter. It didn't immediately respond when asked whether affected personnel had been ordered to change their passwords.
Booz Allen posted a message to the micro-blogging site Twitter shortly after the hack was announced, saying that its security policy meant it didn't usually comment on threats or attacks against its systems.
The hackers taunted the company in response.
"You have a security policy?" they said. "We never noticed."
A spokesman for the Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. did not offer any further comment.
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3 Comments Add a Comment
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- Hackers are criminals.
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- Doesn't Booz Allen Hamilton advise the US on how to defend itself??? Maybe we are paying the wrong company for advice????????????
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- At the risk of having these scumbags come after me, let me just say that hacking is going to continue until we get serious about the penalties if you get caught. More and more of our infrastructure and vital protections are run by computers, from the power grid to air traffic control and even the amount of meds that your kid gets on the ICU ward in the hospital. IMO, hack and you should be banned forever from any access to the internet or to computers. Do it after that and go to jail for life plus 500 years. Manage to do it from prison and we freeze you, sharpen you head and pound you into the ground as a fertilizer stake, where you will finally do at least a little good to your fellow humans.
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