Private conversations between Scotland Yard and the FBI about hackers have themselves been hacked and released onto the web by the very people who were under investigation.
It was confirmed by the FBI on Friday 3rd February 2012 that a YouTube recording of a phone call between policing agencies regarding members of the “Anonymous” hacking collective was genuine.
Hackers from the Anonymous collective itself claimed that they were behind the interception.
Although the FBI and the e-Crime unit have high security email systems in place it is likely that human error was partly to blame for the leak.
The recorded conversations concerned individuals who were alleged to have been participating in ‘Denial of Service’ attacks against The Serious Organised Crime Agency, The British Phonographic Industry and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
The hack seems to have happened after an email with the 16 minute audio file attachment was forwarded from a secure email system to an officer’s personal account. The personal accounts of many people are targeted by hackers and it looks like Anonymous got lucky.
In a new move likely to gain them some public (and governmental) support, the same collective today (7th February) released the hacked emails of 78 of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s ministerial office staff. In addition they released the user names and passwords of those email accounts.
It is interesting to see that almost 40% of those hacked Syrian accounts used the password ‘12345’.
Regardless of whose side someone is on, if they don’t follow the rules and are lax with data transfer, password conventions and security precautions in general, the information they hold is open to those seeking to obtain it.
To discuss how your organisation can lock down your data from prying eyes, call QCC Interscan today.