Tech

‘Anonymous’ claims to hack 70 U.S. law enforcement websites

Tina Nguyen Contributor
Font Size:

Days after the Department of Homeland Security derided them as “script kiddies” and British authorities arrested one of their most prominent members, the Internet collective known as Anonymous retorted by hacking more than 70 law enforcement websites throughout the southern and central United States.

On Friday night hackers affiliated with Anonymous and LulzSec released a 10 gigabyte cache of confidential data from these sites. According to a press release, the cache contains “password information, address and social security numbers, credit card numbers, snitch information, training files, and more.”

The press release also contains a copy of the codes used to breach these websites, as well as a defense of the hackers’ motivations.

“We are doing this in solidarity with Topiary and the Anonymous PayPal LOIC defendants as well as all other political prisoners who are facing the gun of the crooked court system,” they wrote.

The name “Topiary” is understood to refer to the 18-year-old Jake Davis, a LulzSec spokesman who was arrested this week in Great Britain and released on bail.

Though the group’s claims have yet to be completely verified, the Associated Press reports that “a review of the sites it claims to have targeted — mainly sheriffs’ offices in places such as Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Mississippi — showed that most were unavailable or had been wiped clean of content.”