Websites affiliated with the CIA, Mexico's mining ministry and the state of Alabama were down Friday, Feb 10, allegedly done in by hackers. United Nations' site was also hit, government officials and a well-known hacking group said.
CNN reports that message Friday on a Twitter page and Tumblr feed affiliated with the hacking group known as Anonymous celebrated that the Central Intelligence Agency's website had been taken down.
The posting read: "CIA TANGO DOWN: https://www.cia.gov/ #Anonymous." A later one pointed to a news story indicating "#Anonymous hackers hit CIA, U.N., Mexico websites."
Asked about the outage, CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood said Friday night, "We are aware of the problems accessing our website, and are working to resolve them."
According to USA Today, in Mobile, Ala., hackers got personal information for more than 46,000 people who were part of a court amnesty for overdue traffic tickets or other fines, city officials said. The hackers said the data included names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses and phone numbers, license plates and criminal records.
Identifying themselves as "the Cabin," the group said the attack was in response to the state's "recent racist legislation in an attempt to punish immigrants as criminals."
Noting that the data "was not securely segregated from the Internet, nor was it properly encrypted," the hackers released a sample of the records, with most details redacted, says a report on Mobile Register. "This release is only meant to show the Citizens of the state of Alabama the amount of incompetence that is taking place within the state government in Alabama," they said in a statement."We mean no harm by releasing this redacted information. … we do not intend to use this data, nor will we be saving any of it. .. [W]e do not intend to use this data, nor will we be saving any of it."
In the United Nations attack, CBS News reports that a hacker or group known as "Casi" posted what were claimed to be vulnerabilities resulting from weak coding.
When a poster asked why the U.N. site was hacked, Casi replied, "I f— actually system… I fighting for Internet Freedom, equiality & rights for all. You're FREEDOM my brothers & my sisters !
