Security

Operation Antisec lames out again

Public data posted in Pirate Bay facepalm

Richard Chirgwin
Published

A Twitter account, some already-public data, some Apple survey server admin logins: the more people get on board the “Antisec” campaign, the more laughable their achievements become.

The group managed a brief flurry yesterday by hijacking a Fox News Twitter account to circulate an “Obama assassinated” rumour, and picked up publicity (and the usual “no comment”) by grabbing admin logins from an Apple survey server.

But its crowning achievement went almost unreported: someone going by the tag f1esc posted files to The Pirate Bay described as “AU election data”. The 600 MB release got the usual back-slapping under the #Antisec Twitter tag.

The alleged cracker showed the same geopolitical ignorance as emerged in the previous “Australian government” hack (in which a local council was endowed with national status); in this case, the “Australian” election data actually concerned the 2011 New South Wales state election.

And the data was already public. It was downloaded from an electoral ftp site specifically designed to publish the results of the election, and was set up in March 2011.

Although local journalist Darren Pauli Tweeted the data source yesterday, the claim that the data dump represented a “hack” stayed high on the list of retweets by Antisec followers far into the night.

The FTP site is still active, so psephologists can rest easy. ®

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