Members of Anonymous recently published data stolen from the U.S. State Department as part of Operation Last Resort, the group’s response to the death of Aaron Swartz.
“The data dump by the hacktivists contains the names and e-mail addresses of State Department consular and careers staffers and in some cases, their phone numbers and date of birth,” write SC Magazine’s Juha Saarinen and Darren Pauli. “User names are also found in the database dump. Searching state.gov and other sites shows that several e-mail addresses and other data match State Department staffers in the United States and [locations] around the world.”
In a statement accompanying the data, the hackers wrote, “Our reasons for this attack are very simple. You’ve imprisoned or either censored our people. We will not tolerate things as such. You don’t see us going around censoring everything that is inappropriate or we do not like. Basically, you tried to put an end to us and you got owned, there’s nothing more you can say or do. You took away Topiary, Avunit, Neuron, Pwnsauce, lolspoon, Aaron Swartz shall we go on? Heck you think this makes us weak? We are only growing stronger because of the fact that you are forcing us to revolt. When the lions roar you will hear them. And when it’s feeding time you’ll be our dinner.”
The hackers also published customer details (including names, e-mail addresses and clear text passwords) stolen from investment firm George K. Baum and Company. “According to a post on the @OpLastResort Twitter account, the investment firm was hit because its Vice President Joshua Magden was a client of Stratfor (Strategic Forecasting Inc.), a US-based think-tank that Anonymous hacked in December 2011,” writes Help Net Security’s Zeljka Zorz.
