LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The group known as Anonymous said Saturday that it hacked into about 70 mostly rural law enforcement websites in the United States, a data breach that at least one police chief said leaked sensitive information about an investigation.
The loose-knit international hacking collective posted a cache of data to the Internet early Saturday, including e-mails stolen from officers, tips which appeared to come from members of the public, credit card numbers and other information.
Anonymous said it had stolen 10 gigabytes’ worth of data in retaliation for arrests of its sympathizers in the U.S. and Britain.
Tim Mayfield, a police chief in Gassville, Ark., told The Associated Press that some of the material posted — including pictures of teenage girls in their swimsuits — was sent to him as part of an ongoing investigation. He declined to provide more details.
His comments were the first indication that the hack might be serious. Since news of some kind of cyberattack first filtered out less than a week ago, various police officials said they were unaware of the hacking or dismissed it as nothing to worry about.
Though many of the leaked e-mails appeared benign, some of the stolen material seen by AP carried sensitive information, including tips about suspected crimes, profiles of gang members and security training.
The e-mails were mainly from sheriffs’ offices in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Mississippi. Many of the websites were operated by a Mountain Home, Ark., media services hosting company, and most, if not all, were either unavailable Saturday or had been wiped clean of content. The company, Brooks-Jeffrey Marketing, did not comment.
In a statement, Anonymous said it had leaked “a massive amount of confidential information that is sure to (embarrass), discredit and incriminate police officers across the US.” The group said it hoped the disclosures would “demonstrate the inherently corrupt nature of law enforcement using their own words” and “disrupt and sabotage their ability to communicate and terrorize communities.”
The group did not say why these departments were targeted, but Anonymous members have increasingly been pursued by law enforcement in the United States and elsewhere following a string of data thefts and denial-of-service attacks.
Last month, the FBI and British and Dutch officials made 21 arrests, many of them related to attacks on Internet payment provider PayPal, which has been targeted over its refusal to process donations to WikiLeaks.
