12 ms·

Hackers publish data on thousands of US police officers and federal agents

108 points by lnguyen 8y ago

killjoywashere 8y ago
So, sounds ... foreign, and probably not government sponsored. Are there any US free agents hunting Chinese, Russian, Israeli, French, etc hackers?
- black_puppydog 8y ago
  Foreign? Why? I didn't see any indication of that in the article, beyond what could be regular typos. And it's not like the US doesn't have its own fair share of disgruntled and/or greedy people capable of something like this.
  - djhaskin987 8y ago
    No one says "over a million data" in English, though it is arguably grammatically correct. Together with the typos it strongly suggests a foreign speaker.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - caprese 8y ago
    > I didn't see any indication of that in the article, beyond what could be regular typos part of standard OPSEC is to run your typing through an anonimyzer tool. Hm thats not the colloquial names of those tools Basically something to reduce the fingerprinting of how you write. Often times it makes you seem to have bad grammar, but some of the tools can intentionally give you the profile of a Russian person that learned English as a second language. gives you an easy scapegoat to get away with the hacking, and gives the investigators an easy scapegoat to mask their incompetence
- aasasd 8y ago
  > The hacker claimed to have “over a million data” [sic] ‘Data’ = plural of ‘datum’ according to the weird native-English tradition where people import entire grammar rules unchanged from other languages, long dead ones at that. So, the hackers used the word properly for the region, while Techcrunch was confused by this! Glorious mess.
  - toyg 8y ago
    Long dead? Tsk, Latin is in ur courtrooms, making ur laws... de jure ac de facto.
    - JetSpiegel 8y ago
      Alea jacta est
      - saganus 8y ago
        An Asterix and Obelix fan? :D
    - reshie 8y ago
      not to mention scientific names for things. some named ages past but the tradition continues. i think i know what he/she means though
  - thomasfedb 8y ago
    The problem in the usage is that most native speakers use 'data' not as a plural, but instead to identify the continuous stream that is comprised of datum, and therefore as an uncountable.
    - aasasd 8y ago
      Of course they do, as they should. Still too often there are annoying shits around waiting to dump the “it's ‘these data’, not ‘this’.” Have I mentioned that using plural forms from a different language is arbitrary and stupid? All widely-used languages borrow words from others, but they bend the words to their grammar, not the other way around.
- rolph 8y ago
  Yes. but they are officially not agents they are contractors, usually "retired" from an agency.
jarym 8y ago
This sounds pretty awful. How could details of law enforcement officers be available on any public website in the first place? Doesn’t the US have some department responsible for securing public infrastructure? Someone dropped the ball and if Uncle Sam catches up with whoever hacked these websites then they’ll likely be picking up the proverbial soap for a long time.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  Please don’t trivialise prison rape. It’s rape, not a joke. No one is responsible for securing IT infrastructure outside the organisations themselves. The CIA is in charge of itself, the FBI ditto, likewise county sheriffs and city police. The NSA is supposed to do this kind of work but mostly it doesn’t because it wants to hack other countries. Comical incompetence in the government in terms of security is more the rule than the exception for the same reasons as in the private sector. Remember, everyone who ever got a USG background check got exposed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management... > In June 2015, the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced that it had been the target of a data breach targeting the records of as many as four million people.[1] The final estimate of the number of stolen records is approximately 21.5 million. This includes records of people who had undergone background checks, but who were not necessarily current or former government employees.[2] It has been described by federal officials as among the largest breaches of government data in the history of the United States.[1] Information targeted in the breach included personally identifiable information such as Social Security numbers,[3] as well as names, dates and places of birth, and addresses.[4]
  - maxheadroom 8y ago
    >Please don’t trivialise prison rape. It’s rape, not a joke. Dehumanisation will always lead to both the action and the "humour". Until we can conquer that (highly doubtful), shitty people are going to keep being shitty people. Fact. >Remember, everyone who ever got a USG background check got exposed. In that instance, the reaction from the USG was, "Eh, credit monitoring should just about cover it," negating the fact that credit monitoring does fuck-all in the espionage space but what do I know...?
tandav 8y ago
So they publish it in darknet / some private communities? If they published it, it should be public. Where'are the links to the data?
- DennisP 8y ago
  > The hackers then put the data up for download on their own website, which we’re also not naming nor linking to given the sensitivity of the data.
- elorant 8y ago
  We don't need the data. Why on Earth would I want personal information of law enforcement agents? I don't need to contact them in any capacity and I'm pretty sure that if the data became publicly available a lot of idiots would have funny ideas like pranking them and whatnot.
  - huffmsa 8y ago
    It doesn't matter if you need to contact them. They're domestic public servants, not clandestine agents operating overseas. Why shouldn't their position in the government and means of email/phone/postal contact be part of the public record? Pranks will be appropriately addressed, by the very same public servants you're okay with being nameless and faceless.
    - bpicolo 8y ago
      I would never expect public servant's private phone numbers / private mailing addresses to be publicized. The only usage of that would be harassment. Work mail / phone? Sure.
      - huffmsa 8y ago
        Of course not private. But isn't it fair to say that the only reason this hack and leak is happening is because the work contact information isn't available?
occupodd 8y ago
The neo-fascists are doxxed. So what?
aaron695 8y ago
More info here https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/83763/data-breach/fbi-affiliated-websites-hack.html https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/83763/data-breach/fbi-a... Which says it was pokemongo.icu who are mirroring? releasing? the data. Seems legit but boring to me. It's CSV's of uploads of members of the sites, pretty close to public data really. I'd say public data if you put the effort in, they make it a little easier I guess. But there's no DOB's etc iMIS ID,Last Name,First Name,Paid Through,Session,Email,Company,Full Address,Category,Work Phone,Home Phone,Role,District [edit] It seems to me maybe some people put in personal addresses, this would be an issue
lawenforcers 8y ago
Perhaps unrelated but I think the public deserves to know the identity of the FBI agent who encouraged and allowed 2 ISIS terrorists to attack in Garland. The FBI agent texted one, “Tear up Texas” and later followed them to the attack site, watched them exit with automatic weapons and then fled. He was almost killed by police when he was pulled over. The 3rd terrorist arrested 6-months after thought the agent was killed in the attack as a terrorist. This was all to further an undercover investigation. And this story was on 60 Minutes but few seem to know about it. A year after the attack, James Comey claimed they warned the conference 3 hours before that an attack could be coming- https://youtu.be/2hPfBOy9xGI https://youtu.be/2hPfBOy9xGI
- captainredbeard 8y ago
  Thank you for posting this, it's not widely distributed. I find this deeply disturbing as well.
- znpy 8y ago
  > the FBI agent who encouraged and allowed 2 ISIS terrorists to attack in Garland. > This was all to further an undercover investigation. Woah, that's sick. Thank you for sharing, I didn't even know it had actually happened.
RickJWagner 8y ago
To be fair, the hacker's personal data should be exposed too. It's not right. Not against anybody.
- yeahitslikethat 8y ago
  It's right if its people in power abusing their power.
  - steveeq1 8y ago
    Just release the info on the abuse then. Most police are just doing their job and the hacker has no right to release information on them or their loved ones. Not to mention, the people that the police help. As an amateur hacker, I'm dead against "doxing" indiscriminately.
    - AnaniasAnanas 8y ago
      > Most police are just doing their job So do hit-men. I am not saying that policemen are hit-men, but the "just doing my job" argument is not very convincing.
      - RickJWagner 8y ago
        How about 'most police are public servants that don't harm anybody. They bring protection, comfort and services to the people they protect. They prevent crime, and discourage criminal activities. Without police, bad people would quickly overrun the planet.'?
      - yeahitslikethat 8y ago
        The job of a police is not to do bad things and most don't. The job of a hit person is to commit murder: exactly the bad kind of thing police prevent.
        AnaniasAnanas 8y ago

108 points by lnguyen 8y ago

So, sounds ... foreign, and probably not government sponsored. Are there any US free agents hunting Chinese, Russian, Israeli, French, etc hackers?

black_puppydog 8y ago
Foreign? Why? I didn't see any indication of that in the article, beyond what could be regular typos. And it's not like the US doesn't have its own fair share of disgruntled and/or greedy people capable of something like this.
- djhaskin987 8y ago
  No one says "over a million data" in English, though it is arguably grammatically correct. Together with the typos it strongly suggests a foreign speaker.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- caprese 8y ago
  > I didn't see any indication of that in the article, beyond what could be regular typos part of standard OPSEC is to run your typing through an anonimyzer tool. Hm thats not the colloquial names of those tools Basically something to reduce the fingerprinting of how you write. Often times it makes you seem to have bad grammar, but some of the tools can intentionally give you the profile of a Russian person that learned English as a second language. gives you an easy scapegoat to get away with the hacking, and gives the investigators an easy scapegoat to mask their incompetence
aasasd 8y ago
> The hacker claimed to have “over a million data” [sic] ‘Data’ = plural of ‘datum’ according to the weird native-English tradition where people import entire grammar rules unchanged from other languages, long dead ones at that. So, the hackers used the word properly for the region, while Techcrunch was confused by this! Glorious mess.
- toyg 8y ago
  Long dead? Tsk, Latin is in ur courtrooms, making ur laws... de jure ac de facto.
  - JetSpiegel 8y ago
    Alea jacta est
    - saganus 8y ago
      An Asterix and Obelix fan? :D
  - reshie 8y ago
    not to mention scientific names for things. some named ages past but the tradition continues. i think i know what he/she means though
- thomasfedb 8y ago
  The problem in the usage is that most native speakers use 'data' not as a plural, but instead to identify the continuous stream that is comprised of datum, and therefore as an uncountable.
  - aasasd 8y ago
    Of course they do, as they should. Still too often there are annoying shits around waiting to dump the “it's ‘these data’, not ‘this’.” Have I mentioned that using plural forms from a different language is arbitrary and stupid? All widely-used languages borrow words from others, but they bend the words to their grammar, not the other way around.
rolph 8y ago
Yes. but they are officially not agents they are contractors, usually "retired" from an agency.

jarym 8y ago

This sounds pretty awful. How could details of law enforcement officers be available on any public website in the first place? Doesn’t the US have some department responsible for securing public infrastructure? Someone dropped the ball and if Uncle Sam catches up with whoever hacked these websites then they’ll likely be picking up the proverbial soap for a long time.

barry-cotter 8y ago
Please don’t trivialise prison rape. It’s rape, not a joke. No one is responsible for securing IT infrastructure outside the organisations themselves. The CIA is in charge of itself, the FBI ditto, likewise county sheriffs and city police. The NSA is supposed to do this kind of work but mostly it doesn’t because it wants to hack other countries. Comical incompetence in the government in terms of security is more the rule than the exception for the same reasons as in the private sector. Remember, everyone who ever got a USG background check got exposed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management... > In June 2015, the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced that it had been the target of a data breach targeting the records of as many as four million people.[1] The final estimate of the number of stolen records is approximately 21.5 million. This includes records of people who had undergone background checks, but who were not necessarily current or former government employees.[2] It has been described by federal officials as among the largest breaches of government data in the history of the United States.[1] Information targeted in the breach included personally identifiable information such as Social Security numbers,[3] as well as names, dates and places of birth, and addresses.[4]
- maxheadroom 8y ago
  >Please don’t trivialise prison rape. It’s rape, not a joke. Dehumanisation will always lead to both the action and the "humour". Until we can conquer that (highly doubtful), shitty people are going to keep being shitty people. Fact. >Remember, everyone who ever got a USG background check got exposed. In that instance, the reaction from the USG was, "Eh, credit monitoring should just about cover it," negating the fact that credit monitoring does fuck-all in the espionage space but what do I know...?

tandav 8y ago

So they publish it in darknet / some private communities? If they published it, it should be public. Where'are the links to the data?

DennisP 8y ago
> The hackers then put the data up for download on their own website, which we’re also not naming nor linking to given the sensitivity of the data.
elorant 8y ago
We don't need the data. Why on Earth would I want personal information of law enforcement agents? I don't need to contact them in any capacity and I'm pretty sure that if the data became publicly available a lot of idiots would have funny ideas like pranking them and whatnot.
- huffmsa 8y ago
  It doesn't matter if you need to contact them. They're domestic public servants, not clandestine agents operating overseas. Why shouldn't their position in the government and means of email/phone/postal contact be part of the public record? Pranks will be appropriately addressed, by the very same public servants you're okay with being nameless and faceless.
  - bpicolo 8y ago
    I would never expect public servant's private phone numbers / private mailing addresses to be publicized. The only usage of that would be harassment. Work mail / phone? Sure.
    - huffmsa 8y ago
      Of course not private. But isn't it fair to say that the only reason this hack and leak is happening is because the work contact information isn't available?

occupodd 8y ago

The neo-fascists are doxxed. So what?

aaron695 8y ago

More info here https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/83763/data-breach/fbi-affiliated-websites-hack.html https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/83763/data-breach/fbi-a... Which says it was pokemongo.icu who are mirroring? releasing? the data. Seems legit but boring to me. It's CSV's of uploads of members of the sites, pretty close to public data really. I'd say public data if you put the effort in, they make it a little easier I guess. But there's no DOB's etc iMIS ID,Last Name,First Name,Paid Through,Session,Email,Company,Full Address,Category,Work Phone,Home Phone,Role,District [edit] It seems to me maybe some people put in personal addresses, this would be an issue

lawenforcers 8y ago

Perhaps unrelated but I think the public deserves to know the identity of the FBI agent who encouraged and allowed 2 ISIS terrorists to attack in Garland. The FBI agent texted one, “Tear up Texas” and later followed them to the attack site, watched them exit with automatic weapons and then fled. He was almost killed by police when he was pulled over. The 3rd terrorist arrested 6-months after thought the agent was killed in the attack as a terrorist. This was all to further an undercover investigation. And this story was on 60 Minutes but few seem to know about it. A year after the attack, James Comey claimed they warned the conference 3 hours before that an attack could be coming- https://youtu.be/2hPfBOy9xGI https://youtu.be/2hPfBOy9xGI

captainredbeard 8y ago
Thank you for posting this, it's not widely distributed. I find this deeply disturbing as well.
znpy 8y ago
> the FBI agent who encouraged and allowed 2 ISIS terrorists to attack in Garland. > This was all to further an undercover investigation. Woah, that's sick. Thank you for sharing, I didn't even know it had actually happened.

RickJWagner 8y ago

To be fair, the hacker's personal data should be exposed too. It's not right. Not against anybody.

yeahitslikethat 8y ago
It's right if its people in power abusing their power.
- steveeq1 8y ago
  Just release the info on the abuse then. Most police are just doing their job and the hacker has no right to release information on them or their loved ones. Not to mention, the people that the police help. As an amateur hacker, I'm dead against "doxing" indiscriminately.
  - AnaniasAnanas 8y ago
    > Most police are just doing their job So do hit-men. I am not saying that policemen are hit-men, but the "just doing my job" argument is not very convincing.
    - RickJWagner 8y ago
      How about 'most police are public servants that don't harm anybody. They bring protection, comfort and services to the people they protect. They prevent crime, and discourage criminal activities. Without police, bad people would quickly overrun the planet.'?
    - yeahitslikethat 8y ago
      The job of a police is not to do bad things and most don't. The job of a hit person is to commit murder: exactly the bad kind of thing police prevent.
      - AnaniasAnanas 8y ago