Anonymous Leaks Another Computer Expert’s Personal Emails
In a typically nasty personal-political combo, Anonymous has leaked thousands of private emails belonging to a retired California cybercrime investigator named Fred Bacalagan, in what they say is payback for the recent Occupy Wall Street crackdown.
Anonymous hackers broke into two of Bacalagan’s gmail accounts, his text message logs and his Google Voice voicemails, then dumped the whole thing on to a website andThe Pirate Bay. Baclagan was a special agent supervisor at the Department of Justice specializing in cybercrime, and his emails contain thousands of correspondences from the private listserv of the International Association of Computer Investigative Specialists, spanning 2005 to 2011. So, any black hat hackers looking for tips on how to avoid being busted might want to scour the archive, which provides essentially an encyclopedia of computer forensics tips and tricks.
According to a press release, Anonymous leaked the emails to protest the role of computer security experts in suppressing the 99% (you may remember Tom Ryan, the computer security consultant who snitched on Occupy Wall Street to the feds):
You want to keep mass arresting and brutalizing the 99%? We’ll have to keep owning your boxes and torrenting your mail spools, plastering your personal information all over teh internets.
It wasn’t all high-minded political activism though. Just for the hell of it, Anonymous included a bunch of Bacalagan’s embarrassing personal emails—including Facebook messages with lovers, and what appear to be shirtless pictures of Bacalagan himself. And they posted a transcript of prank texts they sent his phone contacts, all of which began with: “This is Fred Baclagan and I am being held captive by the infamous PEDOBEAR CONSPIRACY they say I will pay for all the people I put in prison so plz send help.”
It’s a script that played out back when Anonymous hit the security firm HBGary and dumped CEO Aaron Barr’s personal emails onto the web. At least this time, they didn’t build an elaborate searchable interface to make it easier to find the most humiliating stuff. Computer experts: Use that expertise on yourselves, first.