HackingAnonymous retaliates against BART

Anonymous protest poster // Source: infowars.com

The hacking collective Anonymous released personal data on Sunday belonging to more than 2,000 public transport customers in the San Francisco area in retaliation for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system’s shutdown of mobile phone service on Thursday night.

Forbes reports that the data released by Anonymous came from myBART.org and included user names, last names, addresses, and telephone numbers for riders who used the Web site to manage their accounts. On Monday, the site was a blank white page with the message that it was unavailable for “renovation.”

The hacking attack comes after BART shut off mobile-phone service to hundreds of thousands of commuters on Thursday night, a move that was harshly criticized by the Electronic Freedom Foundation and other organizations and individuals. BART said that riders planned a disturbance that threatened the safety of other passengers. The shutdown meant passengers could not dial emergency services.

In a statement, BART said personal information for 2400 of its 55,000 users of the myBART.org Web site were affected. The Web site has been shutdown, and law enforcement has been notified, BART said. No financial information was stored on the site, it said.

Anonymous, for its part, apologized to the BART passengers whose personal details it has revealed: 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 group wrote. “Also do not worry, probably the only information that will be abused from this database is that of BART employees.”