Government website passwords obtained by Anonymous hackers

MEMBERS OF the Anonymous ‘hacktivist’ movement have accessed website passwords of a number of government employees and officials, and posted them online this evening.

A Twitter account used by the Swedish arm of the international movement posted the passwords, and the email addresses of their users, shortly before 9:30pm this evening.

The account said the attack had been motivated by the government’s plans to introduce new legislation reinforcing the rights of copyright holders in the sharing of online materials – legislation which has been dubbed the ‘Irish SOPA’ for its potential ramifications.

Subsequent tweets from the account specifically referenced Seán Sherlock, the junior minister behind the plans for the new legislation, urging him to “hear the good people of Ireland or expect us!”

Data posted by the account showed the passwords for 17 user accounts, 17 of which belong to the Department of Foreign Affairs, appearing to be the passwords used to administrate the website for Irish Aid, the Department’s overseas development programme.

The other two accounts appeared to belong to staff at Arekibo, a digital media company credited as having designed the site.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said there had been “some unusual activity” on that site, which had since between taken offline by the Department.

“We are aware of website user login information being posted online,” the spokeswoman said. “The website server has been taken offline as a precautionary measure and the matter is being investigated by our IT specialists.

“This is an external service and is separate to the internal Department servers; these have not been affected.”

The attack follows earlier activity by Anonymous, which had previously engineered attacks on Sherlock’s own personal website, as well as those of the Departments of Finance and Justice.

Those websites were the subject of DDoS attacks, where websites are deliberately flooded with traffic in order to make them inaccessible, almost exactly a week ago. On that occasion, however, no sensitive data was thought to have been compromised.

Sherlock yesterday told a Dáil discussion on his plans that he would not be changing the proposed wording of his statutory instrument, despite the fears of opposition TDs and businesses that its current format could allow the courts to grant injunctions blocking access to major websites like YouTube or Facebook.

An online petition against the legislation, launched nine days ago, had attracted just under 80,000 signatures at the time of publication.