Anonymous leaks the credentials of 4,000 bank executives during the Super Bowl. (AP)
Hacker collective Anonymous “doxed” over 4,000 bank executives by posting their phone numbers, computer logins and other personal information on a government website Sunday -- revenge for policies that they say led to the suicide of an Internet activist.
In hacker parlance, “to dox” means to find and release personally identifiable information on the Internet. A spreadsheet containing the information was posted to the .gov website of the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center. The group created a custom URL for the document containing the phrase "oops-we-did-it-again."
The leak is part of Operation Last Resort, the group’s campaign to reform computer crime law in the wake of Aaron Swartz’s death, according to the faction’s Twitter account.
The leaks came after computer attacks last weekend in which the hacktivist group turned the United States Sentencing Commission website into a game of Asteroids.
Last Monday, a House panel issued a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding answers regarding the prosecution of Aaron Swartz. Today is the deadline for Holder to respond to the seven specific questions delivered. It is unclear whether the confidential data was released with the deadline in mind.
The group believes that an overzealous prosecution and outdated computer crime laws may have contributed to Swartz’s suicide.
Swartz, a Harvard researcher who was known for his contributions to the development of RSS and the popular website Reddit, was charged for a slew of crimes including computer and wire fraud after breaking into MIT campus and systematically downloading academic journals from a service called JSTOR.
Over 1 million people have watched an Anonymous video posted to the U.S. Sentencing Commission on Friday.
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