Anonymous hacks federal judicial site, issues ultimatum

Anonymous
The U.S. Sentencing Commission site was temporarily replaced with Anonymous warning

The shadow hacker organization responsible allegedly responsible for cyber attacks like the GoDaddy outage last September made an alarming, symbolic move on the U.S. government on Friday.

The site was successfully hacked late on Friday by Anonymous, who replaced the site's home page at www.ussc.gov with a defaced version of the page with a warning, and access to several encrypted files.

"Fissile material for multiple warheads"

Anonymous' missive characterized the information leaked by the hack as a dormant bomb that the organization hopes "never need be detonated".

The encrypted files, initially available via two mirrors, are 100Mb+ files named after the Supreme Court justices, which contain "secrets" that Anonymous intentionally didn't elaborate.

However, the files are encrypted and thus useless with decryption keys, which Anonymous is currently using as its bargaining chip in the attempt to coerce "the justice system, the government, and law enforcement" to reform speech laws with loose translations.

Negotiation, the group's message states, is not the endgame here. Rather, it demands that the "chorus [of legitimate voices for reform] is not ignored."

Most alarming is Anonymous' claim that it controls several other government assets, and is just waiting for the wrong move from the U.S. government to exercise that control.

Via ZDNet