Flashback:
– A99 Operation Empire State Rebellion: House of Cards
– Anonymous strikes again: Iranian and UAE governments hacked (Independent, 3 June 2011):
Hackers have broken into the networks of both the Iranian and the Dubai governments, stealing more than 10,000 email messages as well as system usernames and passwords and releasing them online.
The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs succumbed to a hacking attack perpetrated by Anonymous, which yielded the bulk of the email addresses. And, on Friday afternoon, a lone hacker – apparently with links to the group – struck the Dubai government’s system, releasing a “historic list of former gov.ae email passwords”, the domain used by the Arab Emirate.
While the first hack yielded around 10,000 emails, taken from the Iranian government and took control of some of its servers, the second was much smaller, including only around 100 usernames with passwords taken from the Dubai government, which are thought to be out-of-date. However, they serve to indicate the group’s reach just one day after another hacking group carried out an attack which yet again rocked Sony.
The hacktivist responsible for targeting Dubai said he had carried out the assault “because it’s time governments learn they have no power on the internet. This is our world”.
Reports first surfaced on technology and hacking blogs yesterday that Anonymous, perhaps the best-known of the so-called “hacktivists” had broken into the Iranian government’s system. One of the hackers reportedly sent a message to The Next Web from the Iranian servers they controlled in a bid to prove their authenticity.
According to Joel Falconer, writing for the technology blog, the emails in Anonymous’ possession and released on file-sharing site Pirate Bay include approvals and rejections for visas and passports.
He quotes a source from the group as saying: “It’s near the election’s anniversary. [Iran’s contested 2009 election] We had to do something.”
Falconer reports the source, predictably unnamed, as saying the group takes down Iranian government servers on a regular basis. The source also threatened a further attack: “For the election’s anniversary, we have a complete DDoS [Denial of Service] attack day,” he told Falconer.
On Friday evening, the @Anony_Ops Twitter account, said to be used to announce Anonymous operations, tweeted: Anonymous releases Dubai, UAE government’s usernames and passwords…They should’ve expected us!” as well as a link top a site hosting the information.
Later, a Twitter user appeared to claim responsibility for the UAE hack, tweeting: “Oh you. I hope you enjoyed my password dump. More will be incoming.”
Check back for updates…
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