FBI, NASA, others hit in massive hack attack

Hacktivist group GhostShell has taken credit for a massive hacking operation that affected the sites of the FBI, NASA and the Federal Reserve, Interpol and the Pentagon along with a number of companies that interact with these organisations.

The group says that it released 1.6 million accounts and records from the hacked companies in fields including aerospace, nanotechnology, banking, law, education, government, military, the department of defense, airlines, and more.

In a Pastebin, Ghost Shell expresses opposition to plans by the ITU to bring the internet under a single governing structure.

The attack however seems to have been motivated mostly by the idea that the agencies involved have been watching people online for a while now:

Since it’s our final stand this year, we’ve made the call to invite you guys to our event as well. How? Well, how about by starting with the fact that anti-terror agencies have been keeping an eye on us from the beginning. GlobalTerrorAlert you and the rest thought were invisible just because your own websites were set to ‘hidden’? Silly kids, if you’re on the net, then you can be sure that someone is watching you, no matter how hard you try to hide.

As The Next Web notes, the data stolen in the hack includes IP addresses, names, logins, email addresses, passwords, phone numbers, and even home addresses.

The files are set out across 456 links — many in the form of raw dump files — uploaded to Github and mirrored across paste sites Slexy.org and PasteSite.com.

It also says it’s sent an email to ICS-CERT Security Operations Center, Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN), Lessons Learned and Information Sharing (LLIS), the FBI’s Washington Division and Seattle location, Flashpoint Intel Partners, Raytheon, and NASA identifying another 150 vulnerable servers.