Hackers continued to plague the Arizona state police, releasing online yet another trove of stolen data and defacing eight police Web sites in what the hackers called “the third knockout blow.”
The latest digital dump, which occurred late Thursday, included documents, e-mail messages and a “master list” of account passwords and other personal information for more than 1,200 officers, the hacker group said in a statement. The hackers, associated with the AntiSec or antisecurity movement, appeared to have obtained the data by breaking into systems belonging to the Arizona Fraternal Order of Police, which said it was looking into how it occurred.
The release follows two others: one last week included data stolen from the Arizona Department of Public Safety’s e-mail system and a second earlier this week included contents of officers’ private online accounts.
A spokesman for the department, Capt. Steve Harrison, said the hackers may have taken advantage of some officers’ use of the same user names and passwords for multiple accounts to jump from account to account. He said the department was still investigating how its e-mail system was initially compromised and was working with multiple law enforcement agencies on a criminal inquiry.
The hacker group, which is part of the hacking collective Anonymous and contains members of the group formerly known as LulzSec, said its attacks were motivated by opposition to “the racist Arizona police state” and a belief in the anarchist goal of “a world free from police, prisons and politicians altogether.”
The release was part of an operation that is taking aim at governments and corporations. “Let this third and crushing blow against Arizona police send a strong message to the ruling class around the world. You will no longer be able to operate your campaign of terror against immigrants and working people in secrecy: we will find you, expose you, and knock you off the Internet,” it said.
The stash included e-mails with anti-Muslim content, including jokes about torturing “ragheads,” as well as crude jokes about President Obama, according to the group.
John Ortolano, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said the racist label was “very disturbing” to him and his fellow officers, the majority of whom are not white, adding that it “couldn’t be further from the truth.”
But the officers’ persecution appears to be far from over. The hackers said they had been sharing passwords for the officers’ online accounts with other malicious hackers, and had issued a public call to sympathizers to help them dig through their e-mail “to retrieve and expose their secrets.” They also said they had shared their digital back doors into the police’s computer systems with other hackers.
Document leaks of all kinds by hackers may only increase. A subgroup of Anonymous known as the People’s Liberation Front has started two new WikiLeaks-type sites for hackers called LocalLeaks.tk and HackerLeaks.tk. The same group has claimed responsibility for attacks on sites associated with Orlando, Fla..
The sites are a response to a lack of significant leaks since WikiLeaks’ release of State Department cables last year, Anonymous said. “Instead of waiting for insider whistle-blowers, the hacker movement Anonymous hopes that a few outside intruders might start the leaks flowing.”
