"Today we are releasing 1.7 GB of data that used to belong to the United States Bureau of Justice, until now," reads an Anonymous press release, referring to the Department of Justice. "Within the booty you may find lots of shiny things such as internal emails, and the entire database dump."
The hacktivist collective has been known to make bold claims, but a Department of Justice spokeswoman confirmed to Reuters that Anonymous members did indeed access a server that hosts the Department's statistical data, including cybersecurity records.
Anonymous released the data dump online through their usual torrent-based delivery system, but an attempted download of the data for further examination failed to complete. Anonymous member @planethacks, who is allegedly responsible for the data dump, has said the download is stalling because another hacker is interfering with the download process.
The reason everyone is stuck at 94% is because zeekill, a person we have heard of before, is attacking our seedboxes.— Joke (@planethacks) May 22, 2012
The issue will be resolved soon.......— Joke (@planethacks) May 22, 2012
The Department of Justice spokeswoman didn't confirm what data the hackers were able to swindle or when the hacking occurred. The Department of Justice is, however, looking into whether or not the hackers violated computer use laws.
This Anonymous data dump comes on the heels of an apparent Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against the Chicago Police Department's website during anti-NATO summit protests over the weekend.
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