Alleged Al-Qaeda Group Claims To Have Penetrated Some U.S. Government
Websites
A group going by the name of the "Tunisian Cyber Army", claims that they, in
coordination with the Al-Qaida Electronic Army (AQEA), have hacked four U.S.
government sites within the last few days. The sites allegedly hit included
the U.S. State Department, the Army National Guard, the U.S. Customs and
Border Protection (cbp.gov) and Office of Personnel Management (OPM.gov).
The hackers says they identified and exploited vulnerabilities on two
domains owned by the US Department of State and one for the Army National
Guard. The attackers claim to have obtained sensitive information,
including the IP addresses of government computers and servers. The groups
says it is holding onto the information to work on hacking more IPs.
The group also says they had the assistance of "Chinese hackers".
The group claims that this is all in prepation for #OpBlackSummer, an effort
to attack US targets between May 31 and September 11.
They have contacted a few hacking media websites to present the evidence of
their attacks, showing the links to the vulnerabilities that they claim to
have exploited. Those sites, E Hacking News, Hack Red and Ill Secure believe
the claims to be valid. Softpedia also believes that the hacks are
legitimate.
The group has not as yet provided pastebin evidence of data seized or other
usual proof of successful attack, however. They claim to be holding 72GB of
data that they say they will drop on May 31 at the start of #OpBlackSummer.
They say they want to use some of that information to make further attacks.
The group has claimed responsibility for prior hacking attacks against CBN
(Christian Broadcasting Network) as well as against banks. They previously
posted a pastebin of what appears to be data from a prior attack on a bank.
The government has not as yet confirmed these alleged attacks on government
sites. However, if the government sites actually have the vulnerabilities
cited, that would be troubling as they are things one would not think should
be an issue in Dept of State or Defense websites.
The group says their next targets will be gas, petrochemical and possibly
nuclear companies, and that they will be scheduling a "conference" soon to
explain #OpBlackSummer.
At the end of #OpBlackSummer, they make the following threat:
We will keep you apprised of developments in this case.
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