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Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Intelligence Compromised in Stratfor Attack


On December 24th hacker collective Anonymous stole credit card info and other sensitive data from U.S. security firm Stratfor. Anonymous claims it obtained personal information about the company's high-profile clients as well as thousands of credit card numbers, which were then used to make donations to charities like Save the Children and the Red Cross.

It is noted that Some Anonymous members have reportedly disavowed hacking Stratfor. Stratfor’s home page carried a banner Monday that said its “website is currently undergoing maintenance.”

Stratfor Global Intelligence is an Austin, Texas based security “think tank” that releases a daily newsletter concerning security and intelligence matters all over the world, including intelligence reports about the drug war in Mexico. Stratfor claims to provide “non-ideological, independent analysis of international affairs and security threats.”

Anonymous, reported to be a loose-knit group of hackers, became famous for attacking the companies and institutions that oppose anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.

Anonymous hackers broke into web servers of Stratfor and copied 200 gigabytes worth of data. The hackers have already posted details about Stratfor customers who purchased Stratfor’s online newsletter. Hackers provided a link on Twitter to what they said was Stratfor's private client list, which included the US Defense Department, Army, Air Force, law enforcement agencies, top security contractors and technology firms like Apple and Microsoft.

Documents from the hack posted to date by both Anonymous and AntiSec, include:

• 50,277 unique credit card numbers, of which 9,651 are not expired.
• 86,594 e-mail addresses, of which 47,680 are unique.
• 27,537 phone numbers, of which 25,680 are unique.
• 44,188 encrypted passwords, of which roughly 50 percent could be easily cracked.

On their database, that at this point appears to be compromised, there is sensitive personal information of subscribers in the server. The information includes credit cards numbers, e-mail accounts and addresses. Stratfor looks especially bad in this instance because the credit card data was not encrypted, which means it was much easier than usual for Anonymous to steal and crack open. It’s quite the amateur mistake for a so-called “intelligence” firm.

The hackers could easily have more information than what they have posted. Several reports indicate Anonymous will next release more than 3.3 million client e-mails.

The unoffical voice of Anonymous Barrett Brown stated that "Stratfor was not breached in order to obtain customer credit card numbers but rather, the operation was pursued in order to obtain the 2.7 million e-mails that exist on the firm's servers. This wealth of data includes correspondence with untold thousands of contacts who have spoken to Stratfor's employees off the record over more than a decade. Many of those contacts work for major corporations within the intelligence and military contracting sectors, government agencies, and other institutions."

Could this include emails and content from Mexican sources who potentially provided intelligence information to Startfor? Will their identity and sensitive information already compromised and soon to be published? This possibility must be making a lot of people very nervous indeed and if by any chance it involves sources on the Mexican side, it could also prove to be extremely dangerous.

It wasn't long ago when Anonymous released an Internet video threatening vengeance on arguably one of the world's most savage and violent criminal outfits: Mexico's Zetas drug cartel.

12 comments:

  1. Thats just funny, A security Firm (whatever)
    whose SEcurity is less than effective,
    kind of like in Real Life.
    Stratfor si a GOP Xtian Mouthpiece

    ReplyDelete
  2. So this has proved what? They have proven that they are searching for a cause. They wimped out on the drug cartels and now they are hurting the good guys and the charities. They seem to be a bunch of brats that sit in their mom's basement trying passwords. I doubt that many anonymous members have even kissed a girl. 'How to get a girlfriend' is a harder code to crack. LULS!!

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  3. Well we can't talk.. we are also anonymous so we would be hypocrites lol anyways these hackers are a big LOL

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  4. @2:54 I agree with you. Would this not help the cartels even more so now that they can possibly track down these inside sources that are talking about them? Way to go anon...wtf.

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  5. Anonymous should hack the white house and expose the truth behind the 911 attacks and how it was a inside job

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  6. Funny when the cartels were beheading their fellow internet cronies, all they could do is pout and cower. They threatened to do something, but like the losers and cowards they are, nothing was ever done. This intelligence firm will find some expert hacker that's locked up and have a government friend provide them with a deal to find those responsible. It's only a matter of time before these individuals are stopped.

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  7. So much for a security firm. Lol!!! Whatever.

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  8. US SECURITY firm is NOT secure :-))))))))))))
    This almost sounds like a joke.

    BTW, the people who lost their accounts, email addresses etc. to the hackers should file a lawsuit against the Stratfor for being so not secure, so amateurish.

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  9. This is embarrassing, I often sing the praise of STRATFOR as a no nonsense source of information, level headed and no sensationalism, always clear and precise, very professional, or so I thought.

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  10. I'm not sure what anonymous was hoping to accomplish with this, other than looking like even bigger assholes. I know someone who's credit card info was stolen and misused. They are just an ordinary person who has an interest in geo-politics. anonymous sucks, and if barret brown was half as smart as he thinks he is he'd known that mentats and duncon idaho gholas can't kill with a word, bene gesserit witches can.

    *sigh* these jackasses can't even get their sci-fi correct. I'm not a big fan of law enforcement, but I do hope that all of these self-rightious, self-proclaimed "kings" of the interwebz get rounded up and tossed in the pokey.

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  11. So whats the point ,talk about having time on your hands? Well these hackers believe that what they are doing is productive at some point? How ? Just what is the Motivation? How Crazy can a person get?

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  12. Just comes to light once and for all that Stratfor is a joke.

    ReplyDelete

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