An Anti-abortion group laid claim to a hack attempt on Planned Parenthood Sunday evening. The group, identified to the Dot and in forums like Reddit, noted that they had planned to go even further, but they had managed to succeed in harvesting data regarding employees, their addresses and information which they planned to publish online.
http://edition.cnn.com/...
A group of anti-abortion hackers -- led by one who was identified as "E" by The Daily Dot, which first reported the story -- obtained data such as employees' email addresses and gained access to Planned Parenthood databases on Sunday night, the Dot reported.
The hack, which of course violates federal law, is currently under investigation by the FBI. For those that understand IT, however, the "hack" purportedly used by the would be attackers seems a bit.. spurious.
Claiming that they were unable to deface or redirect the website because "the backend was terribly configured" the hackers by their own admission were unable to change or alter the website. Planned Parenthood at this point contends they see "no red flags" to show the veracity of the hack attempt having any success at all.
Still, the hacking groups took time to lay claim to it - success or no - in order to scare those who have worked for Planned Parenthood by threatening to out all employees.
Planned Parenthood Responded:
http://www.dailydot.com/...
Planned Parenthood Chief Information Officer Tom Subak told the Daily Dot on Sunday night that the organization was previously unaware of a breach in their systems.
“We think we have really good security, especially on flagging suspicious behavior,” said Subak. “We have not [received any flags].”
Whether or not the hackers actually got any content is up for question, but their threat and assertion that they were making the effort still makes it a crime should the FBI investigation locate those who were involved.
Clinic Escorts with IT skills are already calling BS:
As someone who has worked in IT for decades - if there was actually a security breach on Planned Parenthood, a "badly configured back end" wouldn't stop hackers at all; in fact, it would just make it easier to wipe the whole thing and take it over... which didn't happen.
I guess it's par for the course. Just claiming that you have committed a crime to endanger people may scare individuals enough to prevent them from noticing that it is highly unlikely you actually accomplished your goal. Considering their stated goal is political, I hope they understand that acting in this way has a name.. it's called Cyber Terrorism.