‘Hacktivists’ will be busy this year, experts warn

The unprecedented spike in politically motivated cyberintrusions was capped by Anonymous’ breach of Strategic Forecasting’s website over the holidays. Anonymous demanded a gourmet Christmas dinner for Bradley Manning, the imprisoned U.S. Army soldier accused of leaking U.S. Embassy communiqués to the whistle-blower website, WikiLeaks.

It was a little more than a year ago when Anonymous temporarily crippled the websites of Visa, MasterCard, Paypal and others in retaliation for those companies refusing to process payments from WikiLeaks.

In the ongoing caper, Hacktivists publicly posted credit card records for tens of thousands of the Austin-based online publication’s subscribers, along with their e-mail addresses, phone numbers and encrypted passwords, according to data-leakage prevention firm Identity Finder.

Stratfor.com, the company’s website, remains shut down but displays an apology alongside an offer for a year’s worth of free ID theft protection insurance for subscribers.

A prankster recently began sending bogus e-mails to Stratfor subscribers asking them to rate the company’s response to the hack. The messages purport to come from Stratfor CEO George Friedman, says Chet Wisniewski, analyst at security firm Sophos.

“We’re doing a thorough review of our website to ensure that it’s secure when we do relaunch,” says company spokesman Kyle Rhodes.

By posting stolen information as proof of an attack, Hacktivists make such data readily accessible, at no cost, to ID thieves, says Identity Finder CEO Todd Feinman. “Collateral damage to average consumers has become a very big problem.”