Anonymous hacks FTC over Google privacy, ACTA

The Anonymous collective has again targeted the Federal Trade Commission, this time bringing down seven websites belonging to the consumer protection agency.

The hackers, in a Pastebin file posted Friday, said they targeted the FTC because it failed to take action on Google's newly announced privacy policy, which resulted in the agency being sued by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The intruders also expressed disappointment over the United States' support of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which it signed last October. Anonymous worries the treaty will erode internet freedom and hamper innovation, and threatened to "knock all evil corporations and governments off our internet" if it takes effect.

"You really want to empower copyright holders to demand that users who violate (intellectual property) rights (with no legal process) have their internet connections terminated?" the post said. "You really want to allow a country with an oppressive internet censorship regime to demand under the treaty that an ISP in another country remove site content?"

Anonymous said it additionally rooted hundreds of FTC servers and is in control of MySQL "dumps," child pornography, email spools, bank account details, addresses, passwords and online dating information.

Anonymous derailed, among others, the Bureau of Consumer Protection's Business Center website, business.ftc.gov., and the National Consumer Protection Week site, consumer .gov. The sites will stay down until all the vulnerabilities that enabled their exploit have been resolved, according to an FTC statement posted on its Facebook page.

This is the second time in a month that Anonymous has targeted the FTC. In late January, members of the group defaced OnGuardOnline.gov, a computer security advice website, which remains offline.