wired | It's been the better part of a decade since the hacktivist group Anonymous
rampaged across the internet, stealing and leaking millions of secret
files from dozens of US organizations. Now, amid the global protests
following the killing of George Floyd, Anonymous is back—and it's
returned with a dump of hundreds of gigabytes of law enforcement files and internal communications. (Blueleaks)
On Friday of last week, the
Juneteenth holiday, a leak-focused activist group known as Distributed
Denial of Secrets published a 269-gigabyte collection of police data
that includes emails, audio, video, and intelligence documents, with
more than a million files in total. DDOSecrets founder Emma Best tells
WIRED that the hacked files came from Anonymous—or at least a source
self-representing as part of that group, given that under Anonymous'
loose, leaderless structure anyone can declare themselves a member. Over
the weekend, supporters of DDOSecrets, Anonymous, and protesters
worldwide began digging through the files to pull out frank internal
memos about police efforts to track the activities of protesters. The
documents also reveal how law enforcement has described groups like the
antifascist movement Antifa.
"It's the largest published hack of
American law enforcement agencies," Emma Best, cofounder of DDOSecrets,
wrote in a series of text messages. "It provides the closest inside look
at the state, local, and federal agencies tasked with protecting the
public, including [the] government response to COVID and the BLM
protests."
The Hack
The
massive internal data trove that DDOSecrets published was originally
taken from a web development firm called Netsential, according to a law
enforcement memo obtained by Kreb On Security.
That memo, issued by the National Fusion Center Association, says that
much of the data belonged to law enforcement "fusion centers" across the
US that act as information-sharing hubs for federal, state, and local
agencies. Netsential did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
Best declined to comment on whether the information was
taken from Netsential, but noted that "some Twitter users accurately
pointed out that a lot of the data corresponded to Netsential systems."
As for their source, Best would say only that the person
self-represented as "capital A Anonymous," but added cryptically that
"people may wind up seeing a familiar name down the line."
DDOSecrets
has published the files in a searchable format on its website, and
supporters quickly created the #blueleaks hashtag to collect their
findings from the hacked files on social media. Some of the initial
discoveries among the documents showed, for instance, that the FBI
monitored the social accounts of protesters and sent alerts to local law
enforcement about anti-police messages. Other documents detail the FBI
tracking bitcoin donations to protest groups, and internal memos warning
that white supremacist groups have posed as Antifa to incite violence.
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