Anonymous hacks into FBI - Scotland Yard conversations

It was supposed to launch action against the hacking collective known as Anonymous,  but Project Mayhem backfired on the FBI and Scotland Yard, as the hackers had got wind of the strategy and had a good laugh at the expense of the flatfooted cops.

Anonymous, has long been in the news for a number of embarrassing attacks across the internet.

Early yesterday Anonymous published the roughly 15-minute-long recording of the call on the internet gloating in a Twitter message that "the FBI might be curious how we're able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now."

According to the FBI, the information "was intended for law enforcement officers and though it was illegally obtained", no FBI systems were breached. The investigating agency added that "a criminal investigation is under way to identify and hold accountable those responsible."

It was not entirely clear how the hackers were able to lay their hands on the recording, which seems to have been edited to bleep out the names of some of the suspects being discussed.

The material published by Anonymous contained an email purportedly sent by an FBI agent to international law enforcement agencies, inviting his foreign counterparts to  "discuss the ongoing investigations related to Anonymous ... and other associated splinter groups" on 17 Janury at 4 pm.

The message was addressed to law enforcement officials in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and France and contained a phone number and password to access the call.

According to a law enforcement official quoted by The Associated Press, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the matter was being investigated, and the authorities were looking at the possibility that the message was intercepted after a private email account of one of the invited participants was compromised.

According to Graham Cluley, an expert with data security company Sophos, knowing the time, telephone number and passcode made it too easy to spy on the investigators.

"Even my ironing lady could have rung in and silently listened to the call just like Anonymous did," Cluley said in an email, calling the fiasco "highly embarrassing for the cops."

According to Scotland Yard, they had seen no immediate information that their operations had been compromised.

As they joked about a teenage hacking suspect and indulged in light-hearted banter about McDonalds, the investigators seemed to discuss whether to delay the arrest of two hacking suspects to allow the FBI more time to pursue its side of the investigation.

Updates were exchanged regarding the status of inquiries stretching from Los Angeles to Baltimore to England's West Midlands and Ireland, with a member of Scotland Yard's central e-crime unit telling the FBI that British police had recently arrested a 15-year-old they might be interested in for a recent breach at US videogame company Valve Corp.

"Yeah that's fantastic," an FBI official says in response. "We actually do have a pending investigation looking into that compromise."

The officers also discussed a 15-year-old – described as being part of a three-strong group called CSLSec (Can't Stop Laughing Security) – who was picked up just before Christmas, according the conversation between agents and the officer. A British officer referred to him as a "wannabe" and a "pain in the bum" who allegedly claimed credit for hacking into targets, including a gaming site.

Also a member of Scotland Yard's ''London contingent'' told the FBI his force was happy to help and admitted that things had been "cocked up" in the past. The exchange could prove to be a major embarrassment to the FBI.

The following are some snippets of the conversation between Scotland Yard and FBI.

FBI: "I just want to express our gratitude for being flexible on this. I know New York (FBI office) appreciates it, and the FBI as a whole."

Scotland Yard: "We're here to help. We've cocked things up in the past, we know that... It's not that much of a hardship."

Scotland Yard... on a retired senior officer: "He's a lovely man... one of the true old-school detectives and he's as mad as a box of frogs."

Meanwhile, Anonymous seems to have had a busy Friday. It claimed credit for defacing the Boston Police Department's website, saying the action was in retaliation for police brutality against Occupy Wall Street protesters.

(Also see: Anonymous threatens to release 2.7 million of Stratfor's confidential emails)