'Meltdown Monday' Anonymous hackers leak military mails
AntiSec hacktivists blasted for breaking own manifesto
Anonymous uploaded 90,000 military email address and associated password hashes onto a file-sharing network on Monday as part of an operation it christening Military Meltdown Monday.
The sensitive data came from a hack against military contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, which Anonymous hinted had yielded further sensitive information. The loosely knit hacktivist collective claims to have pulled the information from an unprotected server.
As a result, email addresses on the list are at a greater risk at being at the targeted end of malware attacks, at least. It's a fair bet that many of the passwords used will have been less than super-secure and therefore open to brute-force dictionary-based attacks against the exposed accounts. Other data obtained, but not released, might be used to mount other attacks, security watchers warn.
"Anonymous claims to have erased four gigabytes worth of source code and to have discovered information which could help them attack US government and other contractors' systems," Chester Wisniewski of net security firm Sophos notes in a blog post on the hack.
Booz Allen Hamilton declined to comment on the incident, AFP reports.
The reported hack against Booz Allen Hamilton and an earlier hit against government contractor IRC Federal are part of the umbrella AntiSec movement, which aims to expose the poor security of government agencies and big corporates. This point, such as it is, has been made long ago with attacks on Sony, HBGary and others, so at this point in the game the attacks needlessly expose military personnel, Arizona police officers or gamers to greater risk of internet attack.
Rik Ferguson, a security consultant at Trend Micro, said that the AntiSec banner is being used as a flag of convenience for all sorts of mischief by people who are seemingly unfamiliar with the origin of the term. He writes:
In the ultimate irony, the original AntiSec manifesto from back in 2001 was all about the irresponsibility of full disclosure. That same manifesto was re-posted when Imageshack was compromised eight years later. The manifesto criticised the 'security industry' for using full-disclosure to develop 'scare tactics' to convince people into by security. Are you listening, Operation AntiSec?
Find the flaws, publish your successes if you must, but have the decency to spare the innocent victims of your activities. Obscure personal data before you publish; otherwise you are considerably worse than those you are attempting to shame.
Which seems to sum it up. ®
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COMMENTS
umm....
"As an online discussion grows longer..."
but ratfox's was the first comment.
"Find the flaws...
...publish your successes if you must, but have the decency to spare the innocent victims of your activities. Obscure personal data before you publish; otherwise you are considerably worse than those you are attempting to shame."
That would be from real hackers.
What they do is vandalism, and put shame on hackers.
They seems technically good. They should be even better by showing higher standards than the ones they attack.
Rik F. and John L. don't get it.
"'Obscure personal data before you publish; otherwise you are considerably worse than those you are attempting to shame.' Which seems to sum it up. ®"
No, not at all. And unlike what you write there was no drift from the original manifesto. The point was -and still is- that unless you actually annoy the "customers", govs and big corpos won't do a thing about security. Obscure the data and all Sony or .mil will do is issue a press release saying "we take security seriously and are investigating the matter" and do absolutely nothing else. That's proven, it's how it's been for decades and that's precisely why people like AntiSec etc don't redact the data anymore: the only way to make the like of Sony (or, indeed, the mil: it took them the McKinnon "affair" to change the default password for remote access -and they claim the cost of doing so as damage against Gary, too) do anything about security is to make their customers angry. A list of redacted usernames published on 3 or 4 niche techie websites ain't gonna cut it. Never did, never will.
Note: I have nothing to do with AntiSec or affiliates nor do I endorse them, I'm just explaining what they are doing and why they are doing it.
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