The hacker group Anonymous is known for causing havoc in both corporate and government systems. It has declared war on the U.S., and in the past year alone, the group hacked Bank of America emails, NATO and supposedly threatened to destroy Facebook on November 5.
Now, Anonymous is at it again, this time hacking the Texas Police Chiefs Association website for a brief period of time on Thursday. It replaced the home page with a list of police departments and officials whose email accounts had been hacked by the group.
According to msnbc.com, the information posted on the website consisted of email accounts, social security numbers and passwords for several accounts of law enforcement authorities. In addition, classified police documents and lewd, racial jokes were posted to the site.
Approximately 10 of the email accounts hacked were personal accounts of law enforcement officials, and most of the hacked police departments were those in small Texas cities or school district police agencies.
Anonymous even hacked the accounts of retired police officials, such as Robert Mock. Mock was a lieutenant with the Houston Police Department four years ago, and now works in law enforcement in the Houston area, but has been a retired lieutenant since leaving the Houston Police Department. Anonymous listed him as still active as a lieutenant along with his personal email, cell phone bill, water bill, and emails that were forwarded to Mock consisting of jokes that poked fun at Arabs and Muslims.
Mock said he receives forwarded messages just like anyone else, and deletes most of them.
“I’m upset, as anybody would be whose account was hacked into,” said Mock. “This wasn’t my work account. Got my private information out there. I don’t even know what’s out there.”
Among the officials hacked were Jesus Torres, assistant chief of police in Laredo, and a manager of a Texas Department of Public Safety crime lab.