‘Anonymous’ gets last laugh as it intercepts Fbi-scotland Yard call
Investigators were discussing how to stop the hacking collective
LONDON— Trading jokes and swapping leads, investigators from the FBI and Scotland Yard spent the conference call strategizing about how to bring down the hacking collective known as Anonymous, responsible for a string of embarrassing attacks across the Internet. But the hackers were in on the call, too — and now so is the rest of the world. Anonymous published the roughly 15-minute-long recording of the call on the Internet on Friday, gloating in a Twitter message that “the FBI might be curious how we’re able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now.” The humiliating coup exposed a vulnerability that might have had more serious consequences had someone else been listening in. “A law enforcement agency using unencrypted, unsecure communications is a major fumble,” said Marcus Carey, who spent years securing communications for the U.S. National Security Agency before joining security-risk assessment firm Rapid7. “What if this event was talking about some terrorist plot to blow up something and ‘they’ were listening in?” he said. The leak was one of a slew of Anonymous hacks that hit websites across the U.S. on Friday, including in Boston, where the police site was defaced. Anonymous also claimed credit for defacing the Greek Justice Ministry’s website and stealing a mountain of data from the Virginia-based law firm that defended a U.S. Marine convicted for his role in the 2005 raid in Iraq that became known as the Haditha massacre. The FBI said the intercepted phone call “was intended for law enforcement officers only and was illegally obtained,” but added that no FBI systems were breached. It said that “a criminal investigation is underway to identify and hold accountable those responsible.”
A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said authorities were looking at the possibility the message was intercepted from the private email account of one of the dozens of invited participants, who hailed from the U.K. and other European countries.
Anonymous published just such an email Friday, complete with the date, time and password needed to access the call.
Scotland Yard said there was no immediate evidence their operations were compromised.
Anonymous, an amorphous collection of Internet enthusiasts, pranksters and activists, has increasingly focused its attention on law enforcement agencies. Dozens of suspected members and supporters have been arrested across the world.