Since the unjust killing of George Floyd, law enforcement agencies across the U.S have been under fire for their brutal practices. This has often been in the form of physical live protests but on the other hand, we have also found instances of cyber-activists and hackers playing their part.
A recent case of the latter has been found once again when the data of 200 police departments and fusion centers worth about 296 GB has been stolen and published online by hackers from a group named “Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets)” – totally not ironic at all.
See: Ghost Squad DDoS Black Lives Matter Website Because ‘All Lives Matter’
The data termed as Blueleaks belongs to over 254 countries and contains more than a million files divided into 13 categories including but not limited to images, documents, webpages, videos, phone numbers, emails, financial information, and audio files.
What’s even more interesting is that it encompasses a period of approximately 24 years starting from August 1996 to the 19th of June, 2020.
The group behind the leak though has said that it received the data from the hacktivist organization Anonymous which means that it was not responsible for the hack itself. Furthermore, it also includes the FBI as one of the agencies to whom the data belongs.
https://twitter.com/DDoSecrets/status/1274086005461716992
As for the authenticity of the leak and how it occurred, an “internal report” of the National Fusion Center Association (NFCA) was obtained by KrebsOnSecurity which points to the fact that a web development company named Netsential served as the gap through which the attackers infiltrated. Detailing, NFCA states,
Netsential confirmed that this compromise was likely the result of a threat actor who leveraged a compromised Netsential customer user account and the web platform’s upload feature to introduce malicious content, allowing for the exfiltration of other Netsential customer data.
Apart from the critical data that can now be downloaded to better understand what goes on in all of these agencies, a major gain is for the activist populace participating in the Black Lives Matter movement that can now better adjust their tactics to evade surveillance as shown below:
https://twitter.com/supportanonLA/status/1274160630207930369?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1274160630207930369&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zdnet.com%2Farticle%2Fblueleaks-data-from-200-us-police-departments-fusion-centers-published-online%2F
The FBI is watching all tweets regarding the protests, and sending them to your local police. #BlueLeaks pic.twitter.com/XJlUVocuGe
— elijah daniel (@elijahdaniel) June 20, 2020
https://twitter.com/zoesalone/status/1274188529841639426?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1274188529841639426&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zdnet.com%2Farticle%2Fblueleaks-data-from-200-us-police-departments-fusion-centers-published-online%2F
To conclude, for the government, this will remain a major challenge on how to move forward considering that confidential details of its personnel and operations have been leaked.
See: Cyberattacks targeting BLM movement see widespread increase
Not only can this result in undercover identities being blown, but employees of every agency can also be targeted for years to come in the form of malicious campaigns if they do not change their details ranging from financial ones to simple phone numbers. For future updates, we’ll continue to brief you on HackRead.com.
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