Friday, February 18, 2011

Anonymous victim HBGary goes to ground

The computer security company hacked by members of activist group Anonymous has gone to ground as further revelations about its activites leak online.

HBGary has cancelled its appearances at public events, saying that members of staff had been threatened.

It follows the release of internal documents which appear to show the firm offered to smear Wikileaks' supporters.

HBGary officials said the online messages could have been altered prior to publication.

The company's founder, Greg Hoglund had been scheduled to give a talk at the RSA Security conference in San Francisco this week, but pulled out at the last minute.

The company also withdrew from an associated exhibition.

"In an effort to protect our employees, customers and the RSA Conference community, HBGary has decided to remove our booth and cancel all talks," it said in a statement posted on its website.

According to e-mails that Anonymous claims to have taken from HBGary's servers, the company had proposed a plan to undermine Wikileaks.

At the time, the whistleblowing website was planning to release documents relating to Bank of America.

The leaked emails also suggest that HBGary had discovered evidence that US officials were attempting to monitor visitors to websites affiliated to al Qaeda.

These messages have been posted online via the Anonymous-supported site Anonleaks.ru.

Government payload

In a message to colleagues, dated 16 November 2009, Mr Hoglund allegedly wrote that he had obtained a document taken from a jihadist website.

"I think it has a US govvy payload buried inside," the e-mail said.

The note also urges colleagues not to open the programme unless they were in a locked-down environment.

"Don't let it fone (sic) home unless you want black suits landing on your front acre," it adds.

In e-mails from early January 2011, it is claimed that Mr Hoglund sent out proposals to develop a spying program, known as a rootkit, that would run on Windows-based computers.

"There isn't anything like this publicly," the proposal stated. It would be "almost impossible to remove" or detect.

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