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Anonymous posts email, passwords of 90,000 military members

news
Jul 12, 20112 mins

Hacker group broke into military contractor Booz Allen and also posted data that could offer access to other government agencies, contractors

The Anonymous hacking group said Monday it had broken into military contractor Booz Allen Hamilton’s network and posted 90,000 military email addresses and passwords online.

Booz Allen isn’t commenting. “As part of @BoozAllen security policy, we generally do not comment on specific threats or actions taken against our systems,” the company said via its Twitter feed.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Anonymous eyes political role, but won’t go legit. | Keep up on the day’s tech news headlines with InfoWorld’s Today’s Headlines: Wrap Up newsletter. ]

In addition to the email addresses, which Anonymous suggests expose members of the intelligence community, the group also posted other data it said could potentially offer access to other government agencies and contractors.

“We infiltrated a server on [Booz Allen’s] network that basically had no security measures in place,” Anonymous said in a statement, posted to the torrent site where it uploaded the data.

The group warned on Sunday that it planned new activity. Via the @anonymouSabu Twitter account, it wrote: “ATTN Intelligence community: Your contractors have failed you. Tomorrow is the beginning.”

It also said there would be two releases of information on Monday.

Anonymous and another hacking group, LulzSec, have been attacking government and law enforcement targets for a couple of months as part of a campaign they call “Antisec.” Anonymous broke into an Arizona police system and released emails from there. It also attacked Turkish government websites. Authorities in several countries, including Spain, the U.K. and Turkey, have arrested people they say are affiliated with Anonymous.

LulzSec has disbanded following member arrests. It had attacked networks of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Senate and the U.K.’s Serious Organized Crime Agency.

Nancy Gohring covers mobile phones and cloud computing for The IDG News Service. Follow Nancy on Twitter at @idgnancy. Nancy’s email address is Nancy_Gohring@idg.com.

nancy_gohring

Nancy Gohring is a freelance journalist who started writing about mobile phones just in time to cover the transition to digital. She's written about PCs from Hanover, cellular networks from Singapore, wireless standards from Cyprus, cloud computing from Seattle and just about any technology subject you can think of from Las Vegas. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Computerworld, Wired, the Seattle Times and other well-respected publications.

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