Anonymous leaks 28 000 passwords, claims they’re from PayPal

Given the predilection for Guy Fawkes imagery, it should hardly be surprising that Anonymous would choose 5 November as its global protest day. In celebration, it has released 28 000 passwords which it claims are from PayPal.

The hacker collective has sent out tweets from a number of its accounts linking to a series of paste documents, some of which have stopped working, that purport to be emails and passwords from the payment service.

According to The Next Web, one dump contains 27 935 entries from “mc_customers” with coded passwords and phone numbers.

Paypal hacked by Anonymous as part of our November 5th protest privatepaste.com/e8d3b2b2b1 #5Nov

— Anonymous Press (@AnonymousPress) November 5, 2012

In addition to its usual cyber attacks, the collective has reportedly organised protest action outside the White House in the US and the Houses of Parliament in the UK in a multi-national recreation of the final scene of V for Vendetta.

The hacks have been underway for a while now, with Anonymous claiming credit for taking down VMWare, NBC, Imageshack and Symantec.

A number of websites have also been defaced. Given that large portions of the world are only just stumbling into 5 November, it’s likely that the attacks will carry on throughout the day.