LulzSec Hacks Arizona Police Computers

Inside DHS' Classified Cyber-Coordination Headquarters

The Arizona Department of Public Safety apparently has been victimized by the LulzSec hactivist group's "Operation Anti-Security" campaign.

On Friday the group posted a torrent on The Pirate Bay containing internal documents from the Arizona DPS to protest its anti-immigration policies, according to documentation accompanying the torrent link.

The torrent contains documents including "private intelligence bulletins, training manuals, and personal email correspondence," as well as names, phone numbers, addresses, and passwords of state law-enforcement personnel, according to the documentation.

"We are targeting AZDPS specifically because we are against SB1070 and the racial profiling anti-immigrant police state that is Arizona," the group said in the documentation.

SB1070 is a controversial anti-illegal immigration measure in Arizona that makes it a misdemeanor crime for aliens in Arizona who have been required to register with the U.S. government to not have their registration documents with them. It also imposes stiff penalties on people who harbor illegal aliens.

A cursory look at the AZ DPS documents available through the torrent show a mishmash of unrelated and largely inconsequential files, including various situational awareness bulletins, a complementary invitation to a border security conference, and a street price list for various illegal drugs. There also are personal photos of men holding fish, ostensibly after catching them.

Additionally, the torrent contains a graphic video--apparently taken from a camera inside a police cruiser--showing an AZ law-enforcement officer throwing an unidentifiable metal object across a highway and then being hit by a car. The files are assumed to have been extracted from the email accounts of AZ DPS personnel.

The AZ DPS did not respond to multiple attempts to contact them. However, several published reports claim the department acknowledged it indeed had been hacked and that the documents posted in the torrent are from within the organization. Reports also said the agency took down its website and disabled Web-based email in response. Indeed, the department's website remained unavailable Friday afternoon EDT.

LulzSec--also known as Lulz Security and LulzBoat--has gone on a hacking spree in the last several weeks, hitting government-related sites such as the U.S. Senate and Atlanta chapter of FBI affiliate InfraGard, as well as companies like Sega and Nintendo.

The FBI has increased its efforts to track down those behind LulzSec as well as another hactivist group, Anonymous, since the two released plans to "open fire" with an onslaught of cybercrimes against world governments.

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