A Miami Police Department spokesman said he has no idea why they were listed as a target by an activist hacker protest group called “Anonymous.”
Sgt. Freddie Cruz said Miami Police have "not identified any breach" yet. If they do, they will "move swiftly (with the FBI) to investigate and apprehend" them.
Meantime, Anonymous shut down the website of a global security firm called “Stratfor,” claiming to steal its client list and 50,000 credit card numbers -- and then use that data to withdraw money from clients’ accounts and donate $1 million to charities.
Anonymous is loosely knit and decentralized by design, so it does not necessarily speak with one voice, and confirmation is hard to come by.
A vice president for one South Florida cloud-based Internet security firm, Prolexic, warns this kind of activist hacking will continue to expand.
"This is extremely widespread these days,” said Neal Quinn, vice president for operations at Prolexic, which has helped some victims of Anonymous. “Hactivism is something that we see in all corners of the Internet. And it's very often associated with a viewpoint that many people in the population share. It’s definitely not fringe anymore."
Quinn said individuals have little to fear from Anonymous unless they are part of a corporation or institution involved in sensitive political or social issues, as Stratfor is.
Local
He said Anonymous is well known within the IT community. Its members are “extremely loose knit, extremely talented -- all companies who have an Internet presence should pay attention to what’s going on."
