SACRAMENTO, CA - International hacker group Anonymous claims responsibility for hacking and releasing information about members of the California Statewide Law Enforcement Association union.
Anonymous tweeted on Sunday around 8:20 a.m., "In case you missed it: CA Statewide Law Enforcement Agency pwnt by #AntiSec."
Anonymous released the names, addresses and phone numbers of members; plus, credit card information taken from the association's online gift store was posted.
"California police have a notorious history of brutality and therefore have been on our hit list for a good minute now," Anonymous posted on a forum, where they released the information.
Anonymous cited the death of Oscar Grant, police interaction with the Occupy movement, the prison death of George Jackson and conditions in California prisons and jails as evidence of police cruelty.
"We knew they did hack our website in November and pulled out various emails and information they could get," CSLEA President Alan Barcelona said. "And so we knew they were going to be posting things. As far as I'm concerned, the people at Anonymous are criminal terrorists."
UC Davis Computer Science Prof. Matt Bishop said there is no such thing as a perfectly secure website.
"Anything could be compromised, the question is just how hard" Bishop said. "In this case, it didn't seem very hard."
CSLEA sent affected members a letter on Nov. 10 about the security breach. The letter, sent by CSLEA Chief Counsel/General Manager Kasey Clark, said:
"CSLEA was advised by the Federal Bureau of Investigation Cyber Crime Unit that it had intercepted chat from a group known as Anonymous that was claiming it had successfully hacked into the CSLEA website and obtained confidential information maintained on the site."
In the letter, Clark said many of the credit cards that were compromised had expired.
Anonymous tweeted on Sunday around 8:20 a.m., "In case you missed it: CA Statewide Law Enforcement Agency pwnt by #AntiSec."
Anonymous released the names, addresses and phone numbers of members; plus, credit card information taken from the association's online gift store was posted.
"California police have a notorious history of brutality and therefore have been on our hit list for a good minute now," Anonymous posted on a forum, where they released the information.
Anonymous cited the death of Oscar Grant, police interaction with the Occupy movement, the prison death of George Jackson and conditions in California prisons and jails as evidence of police cruelty.
"We knew they did hack our website in November and pulled out various emails and information they could get," CSLEA President Alan Barcelona said. "And so we knew they were going to be posting things. As far as I'm concerned, the people at Anonymous are criminal terrorists."
UC Davis Computer Science Prof. Matt Bishop said there is no such thing as a perfectly secure website.
"Anything could be compromised, the question is just how hard" Bishop said. "In this case, it didn't seem very hard."
CSLEA sent affected members a letter on Nov. 10 about the security breach. The letter, sent by CSLEA Chief Counsel/General Manager Kasey Clark, said:
"CSLEA was advised by the Federal Bureau of Investigation Cyber Crime Unit that it had intercepted chat from a group known as Anonymous that was claiming it had successfully hacked into the CSLEA website and obtained confidential information maintained on the site."
In the letter, Clark said many of the credit cards that were compromised had expired.