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The group claims responsibility for hacking several police sites, then leaking usernames and passwords, on what it calls a “Day of Action Against Police Brutality.”
To this point, members of Occupy Wall Street worldwide have kept silent on the mass attack.
The biggest target is the International Association of Chiefs of Police, whose website was still down as of 8:30 p.m. “Anonymous,” also known as AntiSec, says it deliberately chose the group because its annual conference opened this weekend in Chicago.
The group claimed that it “hacked, defaced, and destroyed several law enforcement targets, leaking over 600MB of private information including internal documents, membership rosters, addresses, passwords, Social Security numbers, and other confidential data.”
Although CLIFFVIEW PILOT couldn’t independently verify responsibility, more than three dozen other law enforcement sites went down, as well, including the Alabama Sheriff’s Office in Baldwin County (the group cited 60s civil rights abuses as motivation). Personal information from more than 2,000 police officers in Alabama and Massachusetts was posted online.
Reports on tech sites say 16,000 records memberships, and all IACP-related websites were compromised.
Countless users must now re-register with several sites.
Anonymous also produced a video in which a masked spokesperson with a computerized voice says the clashes the Occupy Wall Street protestors had with police serve to “remind us that we’re living in a police state with absolutely no respect for the right of the people to peacefully assemble and exercise their constitutional free speech. But we will not be scared away… This abuse of authority by the NYPD only serves to strengthen our resolve and reinforce our belief that corruption and injustice in America must be fought.”
“The IACP thought they could hold their 2011 annual conference in Chicago unfettered by the clutches of insurrection,” an item posted online today reads. “They must not have known their conference starts on the Day of Action Against Police Brutality. They must not have known that all over the world people are in the streets demonstrating discontent with capitalism and the state. They also had no idea that for the past few months black hat hackers have been owning their Web sites and databases. They should have expected us.”
These people have been at it before:
They’ve struck the Arizona Department of Public Safety and police with the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in San Francisco.
Several people believed to be part of the collective have been arrested worldwide.
The group has posted a “SPECIAL #OCCUPYWALLSTREET EDITION” online that expresses “SOLIDARITY WITH OCCUPATION MOVEMENT & ANTI-POLICE BRUTALITY PROTESTERS…. WHITE HATS, COP LOVERS, PLAYER HATERS AND MOVEMENT TRAITORS WATCH YOUR BACK! WE ARE ANONYMOUS. WE DO NOT FORGIVE. WE DO NOT FORGET. EXPECT US!”
The hackers said they “took aim at the corrupt bootboys of the 1%: the police. We hacked, defaced, and destroyed several law enforcement targets, leaking over 600MB of private information including internal documents, membership rosters, addresses, passwords, social security numbers, and other confidential data.
According to the IACP’s development documents, their systems cost several hundred thousand dollars. We are pleased to destroy it all for free, leaking their private info and defacing their websites in one swift blow.”
Anonymous said it also attacked MatrixGroup.net, a multi-million dollar web development firm in Arlington, VA, which serves over a hundred government, corporate and association websites, by hacking into “records and passwords, internal communications, company schedules, and development notes for over a hundred clients.”
“We intentionally excluded the unions and other unrelated sites on their servers because, unlike the police and those who support them, we will never betray our working class comrades. We realize our role in the social struggle against capital and against the state, deciding instead to set our sights on the police, military and other government websites hosted by Matrix.”
Boston police were targeted for 141 arrests made during Occupy Boston on Oct. 11. The hackers crashed their way into the PBA’s site and its web-based e-mail portal on Friday, posting the names, e-mail addresses, and passwords of city officers. “[W]e are now sharing their passwords for others so they can join in on the mayhem as well,” they wrote.
A statement from the department said, in part: “In light of this information, the Boston Police Department is requiring all department personnel to secure their login information by resetting their passwords on the BPD network.”
The department urged its officers to change their e-mail passwords and any other Internet, e-mail, and wireless device passwords.
They hackers said they also went after law enforcement systems in Alabama because of “savage beatings and mass arrests endured by civil rights protesters during the 60s.”
“Although we had records of inmates, active warrant names, addresses, charges and social security numbers the thought of releasing them never crossed our mind because we would never betray our brothers and sisters shackled and chained behind prison walls — our targets are the ones who beat and murder with immunity, the cowardly carcases and lifeless hosts of power who hide behind a badge.”
The group also expressed support for ist members who are facing criminal charges, for hunger-striking prisoners in California and for “prisoners everywhere.”
In keeping with the ancient history theme, “Anonymous” drags out the “bloody and ruthless” history of clashes between police and protestors in Chicago, and accuses city police of attacking “revolutionary groups” – including “the assassination[s] of Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark.”
Chicago police are gearing up, the group says, for G8 and NATO conferences in May.
“Although they try to intimidate us by training over 13,000 riot police for these protests, we believe that they are the truly the frightened ones, and perhaps for good reason: the high profile hacks will continue, and the protests against the 1% are growing every day.”
“We are 99%. We are the working class that makes society function. [W]e will continue to bring the ruckus on the streets and on the internet. We are believers and practitioners of direct action against all governments, militaries, banks, corporations, and police working towards our revolutionary goal: the immediate dissolution of capitalism and the state.”
The group takes some of its inspiration from Renzo Novatore, the pen name of Abele Rizieri Ferrari, a turn-of-the-century Italian anarchist.
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