Stratfor Global Intelligence Victim of “Anonymous” Hackers

Tis the season to be Jolly, but not according to the “Anonymous” hacking group. They recently claimed to have hijacked 200GB of data from US Security Think Tank Stratfor Global Intelligence. The group claims to have stolen user data including credit cards.

According to Twitter, the group claims to have access to Stratfor’s super secret client list which includes such names as the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, Goldman Sachs and the now defunct MF Global.

The group taunted Stratfor on Twitter saying “Not so private and secret anymore?”

In an embarrassing turn of events for the Global Security Think Tank, “Anonymous” claims to have been able to obtain all the credit card data because Stratfor never bothered to encrypt it. If this charge is true it will be a major embarrassment for the firm.

Stratfor sent an e-mail to all clients saying they had suspended all access to their servers until they could figure out if they had truly been hacked and what precautions they would have to take in order to rectify the problem.

Fox News in reporting the email as saying “We have reason to believe that the names of our corporate subscribers have been posted on other web sites, We are diligently investigating the extent to which subscriber information may have been obtained.”

“Anonymous” relayed through Twitter that it had many targets lined up for this week to celebrate the holidays.

According to Wikipedia “Anonymous (used as a mass noun) is a group, whose members are geographically spread around the world but connected through the Internet, initiating active civil disobedience, while attempting to maintain anonymity. Originating in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, the term refers to the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic, chaotic, global brain. It is also generally considered to be a blanket term for members of certain Internet subcultures, a way to refer to the actions of people in an environment where their actual identities are not known.”

The group has previously claimed responsibility for attacks on Visa, MasterCard and PayPal, the Church of Scientology, and many music industry trade groups.

Do you think that “Anonymous” hacking is a true form of civil disobedience or a criminal organization?