US police contracts and private forum posts dumped online

A data dump covering hundreds of police contracts and thousands of private forum posts by US law enforcement officers has been posted online.

The 273MB zip file contains a large number of Word documents and two database backups of the forum and main website of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), American's largest police union with over 330,000 officers. In total it is roughly 2.5GB in size.

The file is being shared as a Magnet/Torrent file with links served from the website of UK citizen Thomas White who goes by the handle CthulhuSec. White claims to have been sent the information from a source whose identity he said he would protect.

The goal of the dump appears to be an Edward Snowden-style mass release of information for others to trawl. So far, however, little of much significance has emerged from the data dump, save some confidential contractual details and a number of disparaging comments about President Obama made by police officers.

Unsurprisingly, the release of the data has not been received enthusiastically by the police union itself. Its website at fop.net was taken offline following the hack and has yet to go back up. White has also tweeted screenshots of threatening emails sent to him, presumably by police officers.

Investigation

Writing in a blog post Friday, White appended a "message to law enforcement/FBI" offering to "arrange a time to talk in a civil manner" so long as it is in the UK. According to White, he is "at liberty to post the data" and that "any kind of revenge action… will be quite fruitless".

White claims to have 18TB of sensitive material that he has not released and a few days ago he also posted an encrypted data dump as "insurance". The passphrase to unencrypt the information is reportedly held by an unnamed third party who will release it if anything happens to White.

White has some history of goading officialdom having previously hosted a number of other high-profile data dumps including cheating website Ashley Madison and online fund-raising service Patreon.

FOP president Chuck Canterbury confirmed the hack but noted that no sensitive material has been made available. He also confirmed that the FBI was investigating the hack and the union had contacted the relevant cybercrime authorities. ®