Hacktivists leak 1.6M government, industry accounts
updated 06:36 pm EST, Mon December 10, 2012
NASA, FBI, Interpol, others attacked by hacking group
Hacking collective GhostShell has released 1.6 million accounts and records claimed to be from various company and governmental agency systems. A total of 37 different organizations are said to have been attacked by the group, with the resulting data being released as raw data dumps on paste sites such as Pastebin and PasteSite.
According to The Next Web, GhostShell infiltrated systems owned by NASA, the European Space Agency, the FBI, Interpol, a defense contractor for the Pentagon, and the Federal Reserve, among others in an attack it calls #ProjectWhiteFox. Retrieved data includes IP addresses, login details, home addresses, and listings of e-mail accounts from both public e-mail services and government addresses. Documents containing sensitive industry information are also claimed to have been released.
The group has claimed to have sent an e-mail to various security branches and organizations of the US government, telling of "another 150 vulnerable servers from the Pentagon, NASA, DHS, Federal Reserve, Intelligence Firms, L-3 CyberSecurity, JAXA, etc."
GhostShell first became prominent after it attacked 100 servers owned by universities and releasing 120,000 student records in October, followed by declaring war against Russia in November. A statement by the group also claims that this will be their last release of 2012, and calls it an "early Christmas present."
