A sensitive conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard was recorded by the very people they were trying to catch, the hacking group known as Anonymous claimed Friday.
The FBI confirmed that hackers have intercepted a sensitive conference call between cybercrime investigators.
The loose-knit hacking collective known as Anonymous released a roughly 15-minute-long recording of what appears to be a Jan. 17 conference call devoted to tracking and prosecuting members of the loose-knit hacking collective.
The FBI said in a statement Friday that the information “was intended for law enforcement officers only and was illegally obtained.”
The bureau said it was hunting those responsible.
British police say the intercepted call poses no immediate risk to operations.
London police confirmed in a statement Friday that one of its e-crimes specialist was on the intercepted conference call but said that “at this stage no operational risks” to the police service had been identified.
It's not clear how the hackers got their hands on it. It appears to have been edited to bleep out the names of some of the suspects being discussed.
Anonymous also published an e-mail purportedly sent by an FBI agent which gave details and a password for accessing the call.
“The FBI might be curious how we're able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now,” the group gloated in a message posted to Twitter.
Amid the material published by Anonymous was a message purportedly sent by an FBI agent to international law enforcement agencies. It invites his foreign counterparts to join the call to “discuss the on-going investigations related to Anonymous ... and other associated splinter groups.” The e-mail contained a phone number and password for accessing the call.
The e-mail is addressed to officials in the U.K., Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and France, but only American and British officials can be heard on the recording.
Graham Cluley, an expert with data security company Sophos, said that hackers had been able to eavesdrop on the call because they had compromised an investigator's e-mails.
"No doubt the police authorities will be appalled to realize that the very people that they are trying to apprehend, could have been tuning in to their internal conversations,” he wrote in a blog post.
An e-mail to the FBI agent who sent the email was not immediately returned.
Those on the call talk about what legal strategy to pursue in the cases of Ryan Cleary and Jake Davis — two British suspects linked to Anonymous — and discuss details of the evidence gathered against other suspects.
Karen Todner, a lawyer for Mr. Cleary, said that the recording could be “incredibly sensitive” and warned that such data breaches had the potential to derail the police's work.
“If they haven't secured their e-mail it could potentially prejudice the investigation,” she told The Associated Press.
Anonymous is an amorphous collection of Internet enthusiasts, pranksters and activists whose targets have included the Church of Scientology, the music industry, and financial companies such as Visa and MasterCard.
Following a spate of arrests across the world, the group and its various offshoots have focused their attention on law enforcement in general and the FBI in particular.
Original Article
Source: Globe
Author: Raphael Satter
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