The loose-knit hacking1 movement 'Anonymous2' claimed Sunday to have stolen thousands of credit card numbers and other personal information belonging to clients of US-based security think tank Stratfor.
组织松散的黑客团体“匿名者”上周日宣称成功侵入美国安全智库战略预测公司数据库,窃取数千份信用卡号码及其他个人信息。
One hacker3 said the goal was to pilfer4(偷窃) funds from individuals' accounts to give away as Christmas donations, and some victims confirmed unauthorized transactions linked to their credit cards.
Anonymous boasted of stealing Stratfor's confidential5 client list, which includes entities6 ranging from Apple Inc. to the US Air Force to the Miami Police Department, and mining it for more than 4,000 credit card numbers, passwords and home addresses.
Austin, Texas-based Stratfor provides political, economic and military analysis to help clients reduce risk, according to a description on its YouTube page.
It charges subscribers for its reports and analysis, delivered through the web, emails and videos.
The company's main website was down, with a banner saying the 'site is currently undergoing maintenance.'
Proprietary8(所有的,专利的) information about the companies and government agencies that subscribe7 to Stratfor's newsletters did not apear to be at any significant risk, however, with the main threat posed to individual employees who had subscribed9.
'Not so private and secret anymore?' Anonymous taunted10(嘲弄,讥讽) in a message on Twitter, promising11 that the attack on Stratfor was just the beginning of a Christmas-inspired assault on a long list of targets.
Anonymous said the client list it had already posted was a small slice of the 200 gigabytes worth of plunder12(抢夺,战利品) it stole from Stratfor and promised more leaks.
It said it was able to get the credit card details in part because Stratfor didn't bother encrypting them — an easy-to-avoid blunder which, if true, would be a major embarrassment13 for any security-related company.
Fred Burton, Stratfor's vice14 president of intelligence, said the company had reported the intrusion(侵入,闯入) to law enforcement and was working with them on the investigation15.
Stratfor has protections in place meant to prevent such attacks, he said.
'But I think the hackers16 live in this kind of world where once they fixate(注视) on you or try to attack you it's extraordinarily17 difficult to defend against,' Burton said.