Baltimore Police Hacked by Anonymous

Hacktivists group Anonymous claims to have published the email ids. and passwords of the Police officers of Baltimore city police. The death of Freddie Gray in the police custody led to the online campaign of Anonymous which they call #OpBaltimore. As a part of this campaign, they posted the email addresses and the passwords for the email accounts of 7 Baltimore police officers and one city official of Baltimore.

However, none of these login ids and passwords are functional, maybe either because the police department changed the passwords or because the login credentials are not correct. The 7 officials whose emails login ids and passwords were posted, 6 are current officials and one is a former employee of the police department. The other 6 police officials include commanders of the police department and one is a Deputy Crime Laboratory Quality Officer. The one official who is not with the police department any more, Joseph Johnson, now works in the pharmaceutical industry.

Two Anonymous groups, HagashTeam and AnonymousGlobo and the Baltimore Police Department were contacted by various newspapers and website for details, but so far they have not responded. It is however not sure that whether the details posted were genuine or a hoax. It is relatively easy to find the details of these police officials from various social media websites like Facebook and LinkedIn. The format for the email addresses used by the Baltimore police department is firstname.lastname@baltimorepolice.org. It is therefore relatively easy to get the email addresses.

Previously on 28th April, Anonymous claimed that they hacked the website of Baltimore Police department and attacked them with a Denial of Service Attack. However, the website became functional soon. The group had earlier posted on Pastebin a list of email ids which they claimed belonged to Baltimore Police department as well.