Manhattan federal prosecutors indicted four men, who were part of an Anonymous faction, for breaking into Stratfor and stealing credit card numbers and emails of its clients, according to Reuters. Federal prosecutors had previously indicted Chicago-based hacker Jeremy Hammond for the Stratfor breach, the newswire said.
Last year, Anonymous-affiliated LulzSec said it hacked into Stratfor’s network and stole 4,000 credit card numbers and emails of the company’s “private clients.”
LulzSec said it had stolen five million emails from Stratfor, a claim that Stratfor denied. In response, WikiLeaks published the emails, which it obtained from LulzSec, the first example of cooperation between the two groups.
The emails “reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods”, commented WikiLeaks.
Reacting to the WikiLeaks publication, George Friedman, found and chief executive officer of Stratfor, commented: “The release of these emails is...a direct attack on Stratfor. This is another attempt to silence and intimidate the company, and one we reject.”