Anonymous Attacks Vanguard Defense Industries (VDI) Senior VP
Anonymous and its various splinter groups have kept themselves in the headlines for quite some time by hacking and/or attacking a diverse cadre of people, groups, and Web sites, such as Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), PayPal, government contractors, the UK’s Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA), Sony, and so on.
The latest victim is Richard T. Garcia, a senior vice president for defense contractor Vanguard Defense Industries (VDI) and board member of InfraGard, a “sinister alliance of law enforcement, military, and private security contractors dedicated to protecting the infrastructure of the very systems we aim to destroy,” or so says Anonymous group AntiSec in the message posted on (what else?) pastebin.
The post also mentions that Garcia was a former assistant director at the FBI’s L.A. office and once worked for Shell Oil as the Global Security Manager.
In the post, AntiSec announced that it had released 1GB of Garcia’s private mails and documents, which included “internal meeting notes and contracts, schematics, non-disclosure agreements, personal information about other VDI employees, and several dozen ‘counter-terrorism’ documents classified as ‘law enforcement sensitive’ and ‘for official use only’." Links to the files were included.
Anonymous’ reasons for attacking this or that entity aren’t always obvious without some clarifying statements from the hacker group itself; thus, in their own words, from the pastebin post:
The hack seems to have directed at Garcia’s personal email account, so it does not appear as though VDI itself was compromised.
The hacker group's ASCII graffiti from the pastebin post
The latest victim is Richard T. Garcia, a senior vice president for defense contractor Vanguard Defense Industries (VDI) and board member of InfraGard, a “sinister alliance of law enforcement, military, and private security contractors dedicated to protecting the infrastructure of the very systems we aim to destroy,” or so says Anonymous group AntiSec in the message posted on (what else?) pastebin.
The post also mentions that Garcia was a former assistant director at the FBI’s L.A. office and once worked for Shell Oil as the Global Security Manager.
In the post, AntiSec announced that it had released 1GB of Garcia’s private mails and documents, which included “internal meeting notes and contracts, schematics, non-disclosure agreements, personal information about other VDI employees, and several dozen ‘counter-terrorism’ documents classified as ‘law enforcement sensitive’ and ‘for official use only’." Links to the files were included.
Anonymous’ reasons for attacking this or that entity aren’t always obvious without some clarifying statements from the hacker group itself; thus, in their own words, from the pastebin post:
We are doing this not only to cause embarrassment and disruption to Vanguard Defense Industries, but to send a strong message to the hacker community. White hat sellouts, law enforcement collaborators, and military contractors beware: we're coming for your mail spools, bash history files, and confidential documents.
The hack seems to have directed at Garcia’s personal email account, so it does not appear as though VDI itself was compromised.
The hacker group's ASCII graffiti from the pastebin post
