Over the past two months, the hacktivists known as Anonymous have leaked more than 1,000 email addresses and passwords from Shell, Exxon Mobil and BP employees.
The hack, made possible by security weaknesses within some smaller sites the companies own, was intended as retaliation against big oil's efforts to drill in the Arctic, TheNextWeb reported.
Since June 26, Anonymous has leaked 1,044 email addresses and hashed passwords online, encouraging people to crack them. According to @digitalsec4u, one of the cracked passwords included "exxonmobil," NovaInfoSec.com reported.
"The energy companies that caused the Arctic to melt in the first place are looking to profit from the disappearing ice. They want to open up a new oil frontier to get at a potential 90 billion barrels of oil. That's a lot of money to them, but it's only three years worth of oil to the world," Anonymous wrote in its email dump.
"To drill in the Arctic, oil companies have to drag icebergs out the way of their rigs and use giant hoses to melt floating ice with warm water. If we let them do this, a catastrophic oil spill is just a matter of time."
So far, Anonymous's #OpSaveTheArctic Twitter campaign has collected about 15,000 mentions in the last month.
The oil industry hack comes just a week after the hacktivists leaked 700,000 Yahoo ID's and passwords online.