Jeremy Hammond bak

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</div><div>=</div><div><div>6/20</div><div>
</div><div>In its push to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from the U.K., the U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday published a superseding indictment aimed at broadening “the scope of the conspiracy surrounding alleged computer intrusions with which Assange was previously charged.” The names of certain organizations and individuals are masked, including that of a paid FBI informant who stole money from WikiLeaks and later confessed to having sex with nine underage boys in exchange for money and other valuables.</div><div>
</div><div>A decent chunk of the filing relates to Chelsea Manning, her interactions with Assange and other possible ties to known WikiLeaks associates, which serve as the foundation for the bulk of the charges against Assange, including multiple counts of espionage.</div><div>
</div><div>But in hopes of linking Assange to other “unlawful overt acts” as part of a broader conspiracy—one goal of which is connecting Assange to crimes against a NATO ally of the country considering his extradition—DOJ describes several alleged interactions between Assange and Anonymous hackers involved in major criminal operations. Considerable context is omitted from the descriptions of these events, however, including the FBI’s own role in furthering attacks by Anonymous against American businesses and foreign governments in South America and the Middle East, based on a review of sealed evidence by Gizmodo.</div><div>
</div><div>A section of the indictment titled “Sabu, Hammond, and ASSANGE” begins on the date December 25, 2011, and refers to an attack on servers belonging to a private firm identified only as “Intelligence Consulting Company.” This is obviously Stratfor, the Austin-based private intelligence company whose millions of pilfered emails comprise the WikiLeaks drop known as the Global Intelligence Files.</div><div>
</div><div>DOJ omits several crucial details about the Stratfor hack in its attempts to name Assange as a conspirator in a breach that happened without his knowledge. Most notably, prosecutors exclude that the actual breach of Stratfor’s security, in late 2011, occurred 83 days prior to the events they describe, unknownst by anyone DOJ identifies as part of the conspiracy, including Assange.</div><div>
</div><div>This has gone mostly unreported due to the fact that all of the evidence related to the hack was sealed by a federal judge in Manhattan. Attempts by the New York Times and other outlets to acquire the evidence in court all failed. Nevertheless, nearly all of it was leaked to a handful of reporters in 2013 and today form the basis of multiple detailed accounts of the hack and surrounding events. (A portion of the material has been publicly accessible for years.)</div><div>
</div><div>One key document is a confidential computer forensics report, completed in February 2012, describing the Stratfor breach. The report was completed by investigators working for Verizon, which Stratfor contracted about five days after the public became aware of the breach. It lays out several important facts: The first is that attempts to breach Stratfor’s email server began on September 29, 2011, and that four days later, a brute force attack against a specific user account was successful.</div><div>
</div><div>This break-in detailed in the confidential report occurred two months before anyone prosecutors have blamed for the attack even knew of the company’s existence.</div><div>
</div><div>On November 16, the data dump containing the credit card information of Stratfor customers was created. Notably, this predates the DOJ’s own timeline of Anonymous’ involvement by 19 days. That this is the actual credit card file ultimately leaked by Anonymous is indisputable: The dataset contains 79,062 credit cards, the exact number of cards held by Stratfor on November 16, according to the forensics report. By the time Anonymous published its list, Stratfor’s database contained an additional 1,860 cards, none of which were included in the leak.</div><div>
</div><div>Strategic Forecasting, Inc. computer forensic investigation</div><div>Strategic Forecasting, Inc. computer forensic investigation</div><div>Screenshot: Sabu Files</div><div>The first Anonymous figure identified by DOJ as part of the Stratfor hack doesn’t become aware of the breach until early December, according to DOJ’s own timeline of events. In 2012, the FBI fed news reporters, including those at the New York Times, false information about how this all transpired. The FBI claimed that an Anonymous hacker found a way into Stratfor’s network on December 6 and then notified a member of his team—who happened to be an FBI informant.</div><div>
</div><div>In reality, the exact opposite happened.</div><div>
</div><div>Prosecutors have never mentioned, nor has the FBI ever acknowledged the capture of, the hacker actually responsible for breaching Stratfor and creating the stolen credit card file. The narrative has always been that Jeremy Hammond, a hacker affiliated with the Anonymous-offshoot Antisec, was chiefly responsible for the breach. (Hammond is currently serving the final year of his 10-year sentence for hacking Stratfor.)</div><div>
</div><div>Strategic Forecasting, Inc. computer forensic investigation</div><div>Strategic Forecasting, Inc. computer forensic investigation</div><div>Screenshot: Sabu Files</div><div>For certain, Hammond gleefully ransacked Stratfor, defaced its website, encouraged others to commit fraud using its stolen credit cards, and on December 24, 2011, inputted the commands that disabled its web server and deleted its file systems. But prior to December 4, the date an FBI informant (“Sabu”) offered him the means to access those systems, Hammond had no apparent knowledge of the company’s existence.</div><div>
</div><div>Evidence collected by the FBI, which DOJ has fought to keep concealed, shows the hacker responsible for breaching Stratfor (known only as “Hyrriiya”) was closely tied with a group of hackers whose central focus was infiltrating the Syrian government—the same group behind the leak of the Syria Files, more than 2 million emails from Syrian government officials published by WikiLeaks in July 2012.</div><div>
</div><div>Moreover, the evidence appears to show a clear violation of DOJ’s guidelines for the use of confidential informants, which expressly forbid informants from initiating or instigating “a plan or strategy to commit a federal, state, or local offense.” Despite claiming in court that its informant was under constant surveillance and worked side-by-side with agents throughout his cooperation, an FBI official later said of any alleged unlawful conduct: “It’s not like we watched him every time he got up to get a coke.” (This also appears untrue as prosecutors claimed in 2014 there was a webcam in his apartment.)</div><div>
</div><div>In one of the most egregious examples of this violation, records show the informant providing Hammond complete credit card data belonging to a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and an employee of Raytheon as evidence the breach is authentic. Hammond responds that he’s interested and wants to “sink [his] teeth” into the target.</div><div>
</div><div>At the time Stratfor was hacked, companies rarely faced any scrutiny for suffering data breaches. Were the same hack to occur today, coverage of the event would likely be different. After Equifax announced its breach in 2017, the company was investigated federally and excoriated publicly, its reputation essentially torched. Stratfor, meanwhile, quietly paid out a meager $1.7 million settlement and was largely portrayed as a victim in the press.</div><div>
</div><div>In truth, Stratfor set the stage for its own devastating breach through its own sheer negligence. Its security, or lack thereof, was appalling, according to its own forensic report. The company had virtually no controls over remote access to its network, which was not protected by a firewall and lacked proper file integrity-monitoring. It had no password management policy. According to the report, staff “commonly use the same password to access email as the password to remotely access a system containing sensitive information.”</div><div>
</div><div>In 2011, Stratfor was, the report found, ignoring all routine data security standards established by the payment card industry: no firewall, no encryption, no regularly updated anti-virus software, no need-to-know restricted access, no network monitoring, no regular audits of its systems, and no existing policy to address information security. The server that held Stratfor’s unsecured credit card data wasn’t even segregating from its email server, which was the hackers’ point of entry and the only reason any financial information was stolen in the first place.</div><div>
</div><div>If the same hack were to have happened this year, the company would wind up eating the lion’s share of the blame.</div><div>
</div><div>Perhaps the most absurd twist is that Dallas-based journalist Barrett Brown ended up getting slapped with nearly $900,000 in restitution to Stratfor, even though Brown had no advanced knowledge of the attack and, to be blunt, couldn’t hack his way out of a paper bag.</div><div>
</div><div>As with Hammond, Brown took a deal in an effort to avoid potentially decades in prison. But in trying to ensure Brown got the harshest sentence possible, federal prosecutors repeatedly painted him as being closely allied with the hackers behind the Stratfor breach. This despite the fact that DOJ quietly withheld evidence obtained by an informant obliterating that theory. This evidence showed that the hackers secretly loathed Brown and had even discussed implicating him in the crime—textbook Brady material, which would have all but upended the government’s account of Brown being integral to the breach.</div><div>
</div><div>As Gizmodo previously reported, there is likely ample evidence to show that WikiLeaks aided the Stratfor hackers in the wake of the attack, after the fact. But in several places, Gizmodo can confirm, the indictment attributes statements directly to Assange when, in reality, those conversations were relayed second-hand. (Assange is also known for using a variety of methods to obscure his identity online including, notoriously, referring to himself in the third-person.) At best, these are copies of exchanges taken from chat rooms in which a user claims to be Assange, which is not likely to hold up in court.</div><div>
</div><div>The evidence does show that someone alleging to be Assange provided the Stratfor hackers with a script designed to help them more easily navigate the more than 5 million emails they stole (though, as FBI’s own evidence shows, the hackers found the tool was practically useless.) Nevertheless, like Brown, the evidence also shows Assange had no foreknowledge of the attack. Without WikiLeaks’ involvement, Stratfor’s customers would have still suffered the same amount of financial harm, the company’s systems would have still been destroyed, and its emails would have ended up splattered across the internet anyway, in one form or another.</div><div>
</div><div>Regardless of whatever alleged crimes Assange may actually be guilty of—if any—that shouldn’t distract from the fact that DOJ’s timeline of events is woefully misleading. The agency’s handling of the Stratfor breach should not be cast as a model for how to prosecute computer crimes. It is at best a paradigm for evidence mismanagement, and at worst, a glaring case of deliberate prosecutorial misconduct.</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>9/19</div><div>
</div><div>https://gizmodo.com/jeremy-hammond-anonymous-hacker-and-wikileaks-source-1837830636</div></div><div>=</div><div><div>no lnx highlight</div><div>
</div><div></div><div>https://gizmodo.com/dojs-new-wikileaks-indictment-has-significant-convenie-1844166678</div><div>
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</div><div></div><div>9/19</div><div>
</div><div>https://gizmodo.com/jeremy-hammond-anonymous-hacker-and-wikileaks-source-1837830636</div><div>
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</div><div>no lnx dics grafs</div><div>
</div><div>Jeremy Hammond, Anonymous Hacker and WikiLeaks Source, Summoned to Testify Before a Federal Grand Jury</div><div>Recent Video</div><div>Pause</div><div>Unmute</div><div>Remaining Time -2:34</div><div>Fullscreen</div><div>The Best (at Home) Cosplay From San Diego Comic-Con 2020</div><div>Beth Elderkin</div><div>&nbsp;and Mike Damanskis</div><div>28</div><div>You may also like</div><div>This Ghislaine Maxwell Document Drop Is Pretty Damning If Your Name Is Alan Dershowitz</div><div>One Week-Old Tesla Model X Has Catastrophic Suspension Failure And The Resulting Twitter Feed Is As Bad As You'd Think</div><div>PSP Owners, Check Your Batteries</div><div>This Ghislaine Maxwell Document Drop Is Pretty Damning If Your Name Is Alan Dershowitz</div><div>Jezebel</div><div>This Ghislaine Maxwell Document Drop Is Pretty Damning If Your Name Is Alan Dershowitz</div><div>Rebecca FishbeinToday 8:35AM</div><div>One Week-Old Tesla Model X Has Catastrophic Suspension Failure And The Resulting Twitter Feed Is As Bad As You'd Think</div><div>Jalopnik</div><div>One Week-Old Tesla Model X Has Catastrophic Suspension Failure And The Resulting Twitter Feed Is As Bad As You'd Think</div><div>Jason TorchinskyYesterday 7:00PM</div><div>PSP Owners, Check Your Batteries</div><div>Kotaku</div><div>PSP Owners, Check Your Batteries</div><div>Brian AshcraftTuesday 6:00AM</div><div>MORE FROM G/O MEDIA</div><div>READ ON</div><div>Did Joe Biden Accidentally Show His VP Pick to the World Before She Was Camera-Ready?</div><div>READ ON</div><div>Idiot Republican Congressman Thinks Wearing a Mask Gave Him Coronavirus</div><div>READ ON</div><div>A Freaky Elongated Cloud Has Reappeared on Mars</div><div>READ ON</div><div>Eight Years Into Development, Star Citizen Fans Are Increasingly Upset That Star Citizen Is Still Being Star Citizen</div><div>SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER</div><div>This newsletter comes from the future.</div><div>
</div><div>Subscribe</div><div>dellcam</div><div>Dell Cameron</div><div>9/03/19 10:00AM</div><div>•</div><div>Filed to:</div><div>WIKILEAKS</div><div>16</div><div>1</div><div>A leaked FBI surveillance photo taken of Jeremy Hammond on February 29, 2012, six days before the SWAT raid on his Chicago home.&nbsp;</div><div>A leaked FBI surveillance photo taken of Jeremy Hammond on February 29, 2012, six days before the SWAT raid on his Chicago home.</div><div>Photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation</div><div>Imprisoned hacktivist Jeremy Alexander Hammond, a former WikiLeaks source once regarded as the FBI’s most-wanted cybercriminal, has been called to testify before a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, Gizmodo has learned.</div><div>
</div><div>On Saturday, the Jeremy Hammond Support Committee announced that the 34-year-old Chicago hacker had been transferred from his medium-security prison in Memphis, Tennessee, to a federal transfer center in Oklahoma City. But on Tuesday he arrived in Virginia, where he’s expected to be questioned before a grand jury regarding his past ties with WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization whose founder, Julian Assange, currently faces a slew of federal charges, including several under the Espionage Act.</div><div>
</div><div>“Given the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, we don’t know the nature or scope of the grand jury’s investigation. However, our assumption is that this is the same grand jury that Chelsea Manning is currently being incarcerated for refusing to testify before,” his supporters said in a statement.</div><div>
</div><div>Illustration for article titled Jeremy Hammond, Anonymous Hacker and WikiLeaks Source, Summoned to Testify Before a Federal Grand Jury</div><div>WikiLeaks Helped Hackers Rifle Through Stolen Company Emails, Leaked FBI Docs Show</div><div>The revelation that U.S. prosecutors have prepared an indictment against Julian Assange, a fact the</div><div>
</div><div>Read more</div><div>Hammond’s transfer and potential testimony, which supporters say he’s unlikely to give, raises new questions about the scope of the government’s criminal case against WikiLeaks. The charges against Assange have thus far been limited to events linked to the release of classified U.S. government documents provided by former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who has herself being held in a Virginia jail for refusing to give a grand jury her testimony.</div><div>
</div><div>In November, Gizmodo reported that WikiLeaks had provided Hammond and his AntiSec hacking crew with access to a custom search engine tool in early 2012 in an effort to aid the hackers in rifling through a batch of more than 5 million emails, which AntiSec had plundered from the servers of a private intelligence firm the month before. That year, WikiLeaks would begin publishing and sharing with its worldwide media partners the same tranche of emails, which it named the “Global Intelligence Files.”</div><div>
</div><div>An anarchist who waged cyberwar against police departments, private security firms, and other institutions he deemed symbols of tyranny and social control, Hammond pleaded guilty in 2013 to attacking Stratfor, the global intelligence firm based in Austin, Texas. Among Stratfor’s clients at the time were the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense, employees of the National Security Agency, countless police agency heads, and, among other notable figures, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.</div><div>
</div><div>After stealing some 60,000 credit cards from the company, Hammond and his “revolutionary comrades” carried out what they called an “act of loving egalitarian criminality,” using the cards to donate tens of thousands of dollars to charities, prisoner support groups, and digital rights organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Greenpeace, and the American Red Cross. The hackers’ eventually totaled more than $700,000 in fraudulent charges, according to one FBI estimate.</div><div>
</div><div>To his downfall, Hammond counted among his closest comrades in arms, unknowingly, an informant for the FBI, whose every conversation with him online—including many instigating criminal acts—was closely monitored by federal agents in the bureau’s Manhattan field office.</div><div>
</div><div>“Jeremy pled guilty to put an end to the case against him,” his supporters said. “He pled guilty because he had no interest in cooperating with the government. He was sentenced to 10 years—the maximum allowed under his plea agreement—and has been serving his time, counting down to the day that he will finally be free. That day was supposed to come in mid-December of 2019.”</div><div>
</div><div>Hammond, his supporters say, has been voluntarily enrolled in an intensive substance abuse program known as RDAP, which studies have found, according to the Bureau of Prisons, to reduce drug relapse and recidivism in prisoners. Those who successfully complete the program are eligible for a 12-month reduction of their sentence. His legal team now believes, however, that because he was called to testify in Virginia, he is no longer eligible for early release, flushing months of hard work down the drain.</div><div>
</div><div>“The government’s effort to try to compel Jeremy to testify is punitive and mean-spirited,” his supporters said, adding: “In bringing him against his will to the Eastern District of Virginia, the government has put an end to his participation in the RDAP drug program, effectively adding a year to his sentence.”</div><div>
</div><div>AntiSec: Anarchists of Anonymous</div><div>Under the flag of Anonymous, Hammond and his team spent most of 2011 laying waste to government websites, with a particular focus on law enforcement. While the group’s chosen name, AntiSec, was derived from the anti-security movement founded over a decade before, in reality, they had little in common with the movement, the chief focus of which was waging war on the security industry. Hammond’s AntiSec was instead primarily virulent towards capitalists, prisons, and police.</div><div>
</div><div>Unlike LulzSec and most of the other groups who had claimed the Anonymous name for their own, AntiSec, like Hammond, who had once placed on a terrorist watchlist, was purely anarchistic.</div><div>
</div><div>Citing coordinated crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street protesters in 2011, AntiSec pilfered the emails, passwords, and credit card information of the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police and the California Statewide Law Enforcement Association. They also attacked what Hammond called the police “supply chain,” breaking into the website of a military and law enforcement equipment supplier and then gleefully publishing the home addresses of thousands of its military and police customers.</div><div>
</div><div>“While we attacked the institutions of capitalism, it would only make sense to attack those who enforce it, the inherently oppressive protectors of property and purveyors of social control; the pigs, the fuzz... the police,” Hammond wrote in a press release announcing the attacks.</div><div>
</div><div>A leaked photo of Jeremy Hammond’s laptop taken at an FBI forensics lap shortly after his arrest.&nbsp;</div><div>A leaked photo of Jeremy Hammond’s laptop taken at an FBI forensics lap shortly after his arrest.</div><div>Photo: FBI</div><div>In another post touting the defacement and destruction of some 70 law enforcement websites, which had been carried out in the names of Anonymous hackers arrested by police, AntiSec wrote: “We have no sympathy for any of the officers or informants who may be endangered by the release of their personal information.” For too long, the hackers said, police had spied on them and abused their own personal information. “Retribution,” the hackers declared, “was at hand.”</div><div>
</div><div>Prior to breaking away from the mostly Britain-based hackers who merely did hacks “for the lulz,” AntiSec published private emails, addresses, and passwords belonging to the Arizona Department of Public Safety. In a statement titled “Chinga La Migra” (fuck immigration enforcement), AntiSec cited as justification SB 1070, an Arizona law that made it a misdemeanor for legal immigrants to be caught without a government ID card.</div><div>
</div><div>The ASCII art that accompanied the post, released in the name of LulzSec (even though its core members were not directly involved) included a crudely drawn assault rifle with the phrase “off the pigs” written on the stock.</div><div>
</div><div>A LulzSec press release that included emails, phone numbers, passwords and home addresses stolen by AntiSec hackers from the Arizona Department of Public Safety in June 2011.&nbsp;</div><div>A LulzSec press release that included emails, phone numbers, passwords and home addresses stolen by AntiSec hackers from the Arizona Department of Public Safety in June 2011.</div><div>While under interrogation by British police the following month, one core LulzSec member would tell two detectives that he thought the attack “was too extreme.” The cops played dumb. “What does it mean, sorry?” one asked.</div><div>
</div><div>It means, the underage hacker said while explaining he’d had to Google the phrase himself, “Kill the police.”</div><div>
</div><div>FBI’s Misleading Stratfor Account</div><div>In early March 2012, the week of Hammond’s arrest, the FBI began to paint a picture for the press of how the Stratfor hack went down. It rarely resembled reality.</div><div>
</div><div>In a story titled “Inside the Stratfor Attack,” a New York Times reporter labeled as “conspiracy theorists” anyone who believed the FBI had simply allowed the attack to occur. The story included a timeline offered by FBI officials that suggested Hammond had first hacked Stratfor and then notified one of the bureau’s informants, Hector Monsegur, a 28-year-old foster parent living in Manhattan’s Alphabet City neighborhood who hacked under the handle Sabu.</div><div>
</div><div>The FBI, the Times reported, had not learned of the breach until Dec. 6, 2011, “after the hackers had already infiltrated the company’s network.” But FBI surveillance records leaked to journalists in 2014 told a radically different story.</div><div>
</div><div>An unknown hacker named “Hyrriiya” announces he’s hacked Stratfor on December 4, 2011.&nbsp;</div><div>An unknown hacker named “Hyrriiya” announces he’s hacked Stratfor on December 4, 2011.</div><div>The files, which remain under seal at the time of writing, revealed that Monsegur had been informed that Stratfor was already compromised two days earlier, on Dec. 4, when another hacker—whom the FBI has yet to charge or even publicly acknowledge—provided him with stolen credit cards belonging to several Stratfor customers. The list included employees of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the defense contractor Raytheon, and the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), among others.</div><div>
</div><div>“[W]e would love to penetrate their users/network for #antisec,” Monsegur told the hacker, who went by the handle Hyrriiya, “definitely get me details so I can begin working ;)“</div><div>
</div><div>On December 4, 2011, “Sabu,” whose computer was being keylogged by FBI, learns that Stratfor has been hacked.</div><div>On December 4, 2011, “Sabu,” whose computer was being keylogged by FBI, learns that Stratfor has been hacked.</div><div>Screenshot: FBI</div><div>Hammond would not learn about the breach for a full day, records reveal. On Dec. 5, he was pinged by Monsegur, who showed him the stolen credit card data and said another hacker had offered AntiSec “complete control” of a “big intelligence company.” Within a few hours, Monsegur introduced Hammond to Hyrriiya, warning both not to discuss the attack outside a single private room. The FBI was recording everything.</div><div>
</div><div>The notion that the FBI was not aware of the events would contradict its claims about its monitoring made later in federal court. Monsegur’s relationship with the bureau was even described by the judge overseeing the case as “virtual around-the-clock cooperation where Mr. Monsegur was sitting with agents.” His own attorney said the FBI was tracking “everything he typed with a key-logging program.” A camera was installed in his home.</div><div>
</div><div>The FBI would have had reason to exclude much of this timeline back when it granted interviews to handpicked reporters about the case. Even informants permitted to engage in criminal activity under the Attorney General’s guidelines are forbidden to “initiate or instigate a plan or strategy to commit a federal, state, or local offense.”</div><div>
</div><div>Before Hammond was sentenced, logs of the conversations showing he’d been prompted to attack Stratfor were handed over to his defense team. But rather than fight the case, and face potentially 30 years in prison, he agreed to a deal limiting his sentence to 10 years instead.</div><div>
</div><div>FBI-logged chats show Monsegur (<Sabu>), at the time an FBI informant, introducing Hammond (<sup_g>) to an unknown hacker who to help AntiSec breach Stratfor’s servers. Date: Dec. 5, 2011.&nbsp;</div><div>FBI-logged chats show Monsegur (<Sabu>), at the time an FBI informant, introducing Hammond (<sup_g>) to an unknown hacker who to help AntiSec breach Stratfor’s servers. Date: Dec. 5, 2011.</div><div>Screenshot: FBI</div><div>“Now that I have pleaded guilty it is a relief to be able to say that I did work with Anonymous to hack Stratfor, among other websites,” he said after entering a guilty plea in May 2013. “Those others included military and police equipment suppliers, private intelligence and information security firms, and law enforcement agencies. I did this because I believe people have a right to know what governments and corporations are doing behind closed doors. I did what I believe is right.”</div><div>
</div><div>About a year before, a letter had surfaced to Hammond’s attorneys signed by someone named Hyrriiya. “I am stating and admitting, AS FACT,” it said, “that I was the person who hacked Stratfor.” The letter also pointed to specific private conversations that occurred between Hyrriiya and Monsegur that could not have been known by anyone else—other than, perhaps, the FBI. Reporters with access to leaked FBI surveillance records have since assessed with high confidence the letter is real.</div><div>
</div><div>A leaked confidential forensics report would later show that Stratfor was at least partly to blame for the disaster (or at least would be in the post-Equifax era in which corporations are scrutinized over flawed security practices). The investigation, conducted by a Verizon security team, found that Stratfor had failed to implement proper controls over vital systems, which were not protected by a firewall and lacked proper file integrity-monitoring. The report explicitly states that “several distinct vulnerabilities and network configurations existed” enabling the hackers to easily slip in.</div><div>
</div><div>Stratfor’s network was “wide open.” In fact, attaining root access to its servers was so easy it didn’t require a password. A leaked internal memo would later calculate the total cost of the breach at $3.78 million, some of which Texas journalist Barrett Brown was later ordered to pay in the form of restitution, even though he had no part in the attack.</div><div>
</div><div>Enter WikiLeaks, After the Hack</div><div>FBI surveillance records reveal much about the nature of WikiLeaks’ involvement in the Stratfor attack, all of it occurring well after the fact. AntiSec members, including Hammond and Monsegur, both claimed at different times to be in contact with Assange—or, at least, a person whom they believed to be him. It’s impossible to know for certain the identity of the person with whom they were corresponding. (At one point, the hackers even thought that maybe they were talking to Assange while he was pretending to be someone else.)</div><div>
</div><div>Nevertheless, the FBI-captured conversations indicate that WikiLeaks did not formally request access to the emails until after AntiSec had gone public about the attack on Dec. 25, 2011, a day the hacking group referred to as “LulzXMas.”</div><div>
</div><div>Hammond (@sup_g) discussing the release of Stratfor emails to WikiLeaks with other AntiSec members on December 29, 2011.&nbsp;</div><div>Hammond (@sup_g) discussing the release of Stratfor emails to WikiLeaks with other AntiSec members on December 29, 2011.</div><div>Screenshot: FBI</div><div>On Dec. 26 of that year, as AntiSec released some 30,000 Stratfor credit cards to the public, Monsegur informed Hammond that Assange had reached out. “I think wikileaks wants the emails,” he said. “JA says he wants to look at emails first, see if they can do something with it,” he added. “[I]f the mails are in fact juicy to the point wikileaks will accept it then its a wrap.”</div><div>
</div><div>Being a part of a major WikiLeaks release, Hammond believed, would be “groundbreaking.”</div><div>
</div><div>Close to midnight on Dec. 29, Hammond announced that Assange was “almost done copying the files.” Other hackers in the chatroom, most of whom had been tasked with running up fraudulent charges with credit cards stolen from Stratfor, were warned to keep the partnership under wraps. Hammond wondered aloud: “I wonder how criminally liable JA and folks could be by admitting having received hacked stolen and controversial files from us.”</div><div>
</div><div>Another hacker replied, “Well, NPR wanted them.”</div><div>
</div><div>Hammond (yohoho) and Monsegur (leondavidson) discussing contact with WikiLeaks on January 12, 2012, two months before Hammond was arrested.&nbsp;</div><div>Hammond (yohoho) and Monsegur (leondavidson) discussing contact with WikiLeaks on January 12, 2012, two months before Hammond was arrested.</div><div>Screenshot: FBI</div><div>Two weeks later, Hammond reported that he was back in contact with Assange. The hackers were growing restless and wondered when their partnership with WikiLeaks would be announced.</div><div>
</div><div>“[H]e gave me access to a search engine script for these [S]tratfor emails,” Hammond said. Asked whether the script worked, Hammond said it was “pretty primitive but it works,” adding that “JA” had also offered to share access with anyone on AntiSec’s team, and that he’d asked WikiLeaks to give Monsegur access. Monsegur, meanwhile, was also secretly hosting the emails on an FBI server.</div><div>
</div><div>“Just wait for him to hit me up,” Monsegur said back, “these wikileaks are bitches about things. they asked me to hack [the] icelandic government. I did it and they stopped talking to me.”</div><div>
</div><div>“I felt like a whore,” he said.</div><div>
</div><div>Dell Cameron</div><div>Posts</div><div>Email</div><div>Twitter</div><div>Senior Reporter, Privacy & Security</div><div>
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