FBI Hacked by 'Anonymous' Group
Hacking group Anonymous has released a conference call between the Federal Bureau of Investigations and Scotland Yard.
The tape, available on You Tube, was recorded by Anonymous, which is an international hacking group. On it, listeners can hear information regarding two cybercrime cases currently in the British courts.
"The information was illegally obtained, and a criminal investigation is underway," confirmed FBI Spokesman Tim Flannelly. The FBI has been working intensely to shut down cybercrime rings, all the while being the subject of numerous attacks.
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Anonymous operates under the motto "We are Anonymous, We are legion, We never forgive, We never forget, Expect us (sic)." The group currently has nearly 500,000 followers on Twitter and has claimed responsibility for other attacks, including one on Dec. 25 in which they gathered thousands of credit card numbers from clients of Stratfor, a U.S. company.
Investigators believe that Anonymous was able to hack into the phone call by first compromising email accounts of people within the agencies.
"No doubt the police authorities will be appalled to realize that the very people that they are trying to apprehend could have been tuning in to their internal conversations," blogged Graham Culey, an expert in data security.
One of the cases discussed on the tape was that of Ryan Cleary, a 19-year old arrested and charged with a cyber-attack on Britain's Serious Organized Crime Agency. Cleary has also been charged with participating in five other cyber-attacks, including those on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Senate, and media powerhouse Sony.
Police told reporters that Cleary, "did conspire with other person or persons unknown to conduct unauthorized modification of computers by constructing and distributing a computer program to form a network of computers modified and configured to conduct Distributed Denial of Service attacks."
Cleary is alleged to have been a part of a larger network of hackers named the LulzSec group. Its focus has primarily been on U.S. based institutions, and has led to an international investigation of known members.
