Thursday, July 18, 2013

The CyberWarriors Are at It Again: Post Passwords of Capitol Hill Staffers

A Twitter account that claims to be affiliated with the hacker group Anonymous posted the email addresses and passwords of hundreds of current and former Congressional staffers, reports The Hill.

The Twitter handle @OpLastResort warned Congress in a tweet that it's closely watching how lawmakers respond to the revelations over a pair of controversial National Security Agency surveillance programs. The tweet included a link to a website that listed the email addresses and passwords to hundreds of current and former Hill staffers.

"We mean it. This is a pivotal moment for America, and we will not tolerate failure," OpLastResort tweeted. It included the hashtags #Congress #Senate #FISA PRISM.

According to The Hill, the hackers said they removed some of the staffers' passwords from the list and shuffled the order of the remaining ones so the passwords don't belong to the email addresses they're posted next to.
But the hackers said they were "being way too generous" for taking this step and warned that they "reserve the right to spontaneously decide this restraint was unjustified."

An email that was sent to congressional offices, obtained by The Hill, said House Security believes the leaked staffer emails and passwords were poached from another online service rather than the House network's email system
A separate email sent to House offices said the breach was traced to the iConstituent newsletter product, which is typically used by press staffers to communicate with constituents.

The email urged staffers to change their password for the iConstitutent service and said their email accounts on the House network were not affected by the breach.

No comments:

Post a Comment