Anonymous takes down CIA site, exposes Ala. personal data

Hackers claiming affiliation with Anonymous are taking credit for taking down the CIA’s public site, exposing personal data from Alabama court records and pilfering e-mails from the Mexican mining agency, according to news reports. Other hackers hit the United Nations’ site.

The CIA main site (cia.gov) is unavailable and apparently has been down for several hours as the result of a distributed-denial-of-service attack. A spokesman told CNN the agency was “looking into these reports.” There’s no indication hackers penetrated CIA computers or accessed sensitive information.

Anonymous announced the feat in a tweet. More here.

In Mobile, Ala., hackers got personal information for more than 46,000 people who were part of a court amnesty for overdue traffic tickets or other fines, city officials said. The hackers said the data included names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses and phone numbers, license plates and criminal records.

Identifying themselves as “the Cabin,” the group said the attack was in response to the state’s “recent racist legislation in an attempt to punish immigrants as criminals.”

Noting that the data “was not securely segregated from the Internet, nor was it properly encrypted,” the hackers released a sample of the records, with most details redacted, the Mobile Register reports. “This release is only meant to show the Citizens of the state of Alabama the amount of incompetence that is taking place within the state government in Alabama,” they said in a statement. “We mean no harm by releasing this redacted information. … we do not intend to use this data, nor will we be saving any of it. .. [W]e do not intend to use this data, nor will we be saving any of it.”

Mobile city spokeswoman Barbara Drummond said Utah authorities alerted officials Thursday night about a possible attack. She told the Associated Press that the city shut down its computers to avoid the attack but that hackers .

In the other attacks, Anonymous linked to documents, e-mails and other files it said were taken from the website of Mexico’s mining ministry, CNN reports.

In the United Nations attack, CBS News reports that a hacker or group known as “Casi” posted what were claimed to be vulnerabilities resulting from weak coding.

When a poster asked why the U.N. site was hacked, Casi replied, “I f— actually system… I fighting for Internet Freedom, equiality rights for all. You’re FREEDOM my brothers my sisters ! 3”

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