How about a serious thread today for a change...
Anonymous is in over it's head again.
This time they've picked on STRATFOR, a private (but powerful) strategic Defense intelligence company (thinktank) who has been cited by media such as CNN, Bloomberg, the Associated Press, Reuters, The New York Times and the BBC as an authority on strategic and tactical intelligence issues. Barron's once referred to it as "The Shadow CIA". Many of their clients are seriously heavy hitters, who are normally not made public.
Well Anon just made a large chunk of them public, and even more, made their entire user databases public, including credit card numbers!
Further, they stole $1 million from those credit cards and sent that money to the red cross, Save the Children and Care charities.
D'oh!
Interestingly enough, Stratfor's website is still down now after 6 friggin Days!
BBC News - Hacked Stratfor security think tank keeps site offline
Apparently they grabbed Statfor's entire user database on Christmas Eve. (Although stratfor says those names are only new subscribers.) I've heard minor rumblings about this since that day, but then after anonymous released the A-M section of their hack The identity theft prevention service Identity Finder has carried out its own analysis of details posted online about hacked clients...
In an eye-opening article at RT, Anonymous' purpose has been revealed... They weren't there for money; but the info in those emails:
So they went fishing, and their net is seriously heavy... But they don't seem to know what they have caught yet.
If it's small-time stuff? No biggie.
If it's the next 9/11 or other type of conspiracy? Then I'd bet those anonymous folks have probably already breathed their last breaths.

Anonymous is in over it's head again.
This time they've picked on STRATFOR, a private (but powerful) strategic Defense intelligence company (thinktank) who has been cited by media such as CNN, Bloomberg, the Associated Press, Reuters, The New York Times and the BBC as an authority on strategic and tactical intelligence issues. Barron's once referred to it as "The Shadow CIA". Many of their clients are seriously heavy hitters, who are normally not made public.
Well Anon just made a large chunk of them public, and even more, made their entire user databases public, including credit card numbers!
Further, they stole $1 million from those credit cards and sent that money to the red cross, Save the Children and Care charities.
D'oh!
Interestingly enough, Stratfor's website is still down now after 6 friggin Days!
BBC News - Hacked Stratfor security think tank keeps site offline
Apparently they grabbed Statfor's entire user database on Christmas Eve. (Although stratfor says those names are only new subscribers.) I've heard minor rumblings about this since that day, but then after anonymous released the A-M section of their hack The identity theft prevention service Identity Finder has carried out its own analysis of details posted online about hacked clients...
It suggested that the attack netted:
9,651 unexpired credit card numbers
47,680 unique email addresses
25,680 unique telephone numbers
44,188 encrypted passwords of which roughly half could be "easily cracked"
This list is expected to grow if the hackers publish details of the N to Z list.
In an eye-opening article at RT, Anonymous' purpose has been revealed... They weren't there for money; but the info in those emails:
While the investigation opens up, operatives with Anonymous have credited themselves for the attack, a campaign waged under its Antisec campaign that targets mainstream and allegedly corrupt corporations and exposes them for their lack of online protection. Anonymous op Barrett Brown wrote on the web earlier this week that, “among many other things, a widespread conspiracy by the Justice Department, Bank of America and other parties to attack and discredit WikiLeaks and other activist groups” helped draw the hacktivists towards disrupting Stratfor. As a result of the hack, he said the data obtained “includes correspondence with untold thousands of contacts who have spoken to Stratfor's employees off the record over more than a decade.”
“The Stratfor operation may yield the most revelatory trove of information ever seized by Anonymous,” Brown added in a tweet on Christmas Eve.
Brown said to RT this week that subscribers to Stratfor’s emails should not be concerned over the hack, but rather “It is any of their past email correspondents who might have revealed information that could come back to haunt them who should be concerned for their reputations in such cases, as they might be shown to be culpable for anything that negatively affects the public.”
To the Daily Mail, Brown adds that the emails could “provide the smoking gun for a number of crimes of extraordinary importance.”
So they went fishing, and their net is seriously heavy... But they don't seem to know what they have caught yet.
If it's small-time stuff? No biggie.
If it's the next 9/11 or other type of conspiracy? Then I'd bet those anonymous folks have probably already breathed their last breaths.