Anonymous Hacks Bay Area Rapid Transit Service
The infamous hacker group, Anonymous, struck out against San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit Service (BART), by posting the contact information of over 2,000 customers. Anonymous posted people’s names, phone numbers, street and email addresses on its own website. In addition, Anonymous is also calling for a disruption of the Bay Area Rapid Transit Service’s evening commute on Monday.
Anonymous Hacks Bay Area Rapid Transit Service| Why it happened?
The cyber attack came in response to BART’s recent decision to block wireless service in several of its San Francisco stations Thursday night as the agency aimed to quell a planned protest over a transit police shooting because the protest was going to be designed to disrupt the evening commute.
“We are Anonymous, we are your citizens, we are the people, we do not tolerate oppression from any government agency,” the hackers wrote on their own website. “BART has proved multiple times that they have no problem exploiting and abusing the people.
The group Anonymous, according to its website, does “not tolerate oppression from any government agency,” and it said it was releasing the User Info Database of MyBart.gov as one of many actions to come. The BART has disabled the effected website(myBART.org) after it had been altered by the group who posted images of Guy Fawkes masks that anarchists have previously worn when showing up to physical protests.
“We apologize to any citizen that has his information published, but you should go to BART and ask them why your information wasn’t secure with them,” the statement said.
The names and contact info published on Sunday had come from a database of 55,000 subscribers. Thankfully no bank account or credit card information had been listed, but no one is certain how much information or how many more names Anonymous has; nor are they certain if they’ll post more information in the future. However, the BART is fearful that there will be more cyber attacks from Anonymous to come.
Anonymous Hacks Bay Area Rapid Transit Service| What others are saying
Yahoo.com interviewed a handful of people on the topic of Anonymous and this is what they had to say:
“I’m just shocked that they didn’t think about the implications of this. We really don’t have the right to be this type of censor,” Lynette Sweet, who serves on BART’s board of directors, said previously. “In my opinion, we’ve let the actions of a few people affect everybody. And that’s not fair.”
Laura Eichman was among those whose email and home phone number were published by the hackers Sunday.
I think what they (the hackers) did was illegal and wrong. I work in IT myself, and I think that this was not ethical hacking. I think this was completely unjustified,” Eichman said. She said she doesn’t blame BART and feels its action earlier in the week of blocking cell phone service was reasonable.
“It doesn’t necessarily keep me from taking BART in the future but I will certainly have to review where I set up accounts and what kind of data I’m going to keep online,” Eichman said.
Michael Beekman of San Francisco told the AP that he didn’t approve of BART’s move to cut cell phone service or the Anonymous posting.
“I’m not paranoid but i feel like it was an invasion of privacy,” he said. “I thought I would never personally be involved in any of their (Anonymous’) shenanigans.”http://news.yahoo.com/hackers-protest-bart-decision-block-cellphones-021628029.html
What do you think about the actions of Anonymous? Do you think this was a case of ethical hacking, or do you think that their actions were out of line?