(RTTNews) - A group of Austrian hackers has published the names and home addresses of nearly 25,000 police officials, triggering fears that the move might compromise the personal security of the officers.
According to Austrian officials, the data published as a searchable database on Twitter contained private information of more than 24,938 law enforcement officials ranging from beat officers to senior commanders.
Police union official Walter Scharinger said Monday that the hackers' move poses risks to officers as they might now become targets of revenge attacks by criminals they have encountered earlier.
Austrian authorities said the police data was published by a domestic hacker group known as 'AnonAustria', the Austrian branch of the global hacker collective 'Anonymous.'
The group said in a statement posted on its Twitter account that the move was to protest against a proposed law that would force telecommunications companies to save the details of all their telephone and internet traffic for a period of six months and provide them to the police, if required.
Austria's State Office of Criminal Investigation has launched an investigation into the leak of the police data.
Anonymous had come into prominence late last year after breaching websites belonging to several Internet services and online payment providers who cut their ties with whistle-blower WikiLeaks, including MasterCard and PayPal.
WikiLeaks, a website that publishes leaked classified information online, had earlier published thousands of confidential cables sent by U.S. embassies across the world as well as secret documents relating to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Many members of Anonymous as well as allied hacker groups have already been arrested on both sides of the Atlantic in a crackdown involving European and US enforcement agencies. In response to those arrests, Anonymous called on its supporters to stop using PayPal accounts for making online payments
by RTT Staff Writer
For comments and feedback: editorial@rttnews.com
