Anonymous hacks Booz Allen Hamilton to leak info on 90K
The hacktivist group Anonymous on Monday released the email addresses and encrypted passwords of some 90,000 military users, all siphoned from a vulnerable server at government consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton.The hacking collective said the server "basically had no security measures in place,” according to a statement posted on file-sharing site The Pirate Bay.
The leak included the login credentials of personnel from the U.S. Central Command, the Marine Corps, Air Force, State Department and private sector contactors, according to a report from technology weblog Gizmodo. The military passwords were encrypted using the oft-criticized MD5 hash algorithm, Anonymous said in its statement.
The data dump also includes a variety of information related to government agencies, federal contractors and “shady white hat companies,” Anonymous said. In addition, the hacking group claimed to have deleted four gigabits of the consulting firm's source code which it deemed “insignificant.”
Booz Allen Hamilton, which offers a host of cybersecurity solutions, declined comment.
"As part of [our] security policy, we generally do not comment on specific threats or actions taken against our systems," Booz Allen wrote in a tweet.The leak was part of a recently announced venture dubbed Anti-Security, or AntiSec, which calls for hackers worldwide to expose sensitive data that reveals wrongdoing within governments and corporations.
In its statement, Anonymous accused Booz Allen Hamilton of “shady” business practices, including “potentially illegal surveillance systems, corruption between company and government officials, warrantless wiretapping, and several other questionable surveillance projects.”
“All of this is, of course, taking place behind closed doors, free from any pubic knowledge or scrutiny,” the hacktivists said.
Anonymous has previously taken credit for attacks against anti-WikiLeaks websites and the security firm HB Gary Federal.
The compromise of HBGary Federal revealed some troubling things, including plans by the company and two other firms to silence WikiLeaks supporters, including Salon.com journalist Glenn Greenwald.
