Last week, it was threatening Facebook. But renowned hackers have now attacked Bay Area Rapid Transit System online.
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The cyber attack, known as Operation BART, which took place on Sunday, involved infiltrating the myBART.com website and capturing personal details of thousands of BART users.
The self proclaimed ‘hacktivists’ also bombarded myBART.com homepage with eerie pirate logos.
myBART members were informed of the attack with a message: “In response to this intrusion, we will temporarily shut down the myBART.org website, and have notified law enforcement authorities.”
“Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we know that an unauthorized person has obtained contact information from at least 2,400 of our 55,000 members.”
Personal details of members was stolen, it confirmed no financial details was among the data lifted:”In most cases, the information consists of names, email addresses, and passwords. In some cases, the database also listed an address and phone number.”
“No financial information is stored in the myBART database.”
The cyber attack followed the recent shooting dead of a homeless man by a BART officer and public protests demanding the officers dismissal, after which, BART sought to prevent potential riots by cutting off phone service on the train system on Thursday.
However, this failed to quell the protests from incensed San Franciscans, with a small crowd of around 50 protesting at Civic Center Station platform in the city yesterday, chanting “no justice, no peace.”
With the recent riots in the UK gathering pace through the likes of Twitter and BlackBerry Messenger, it appears BART authorities there were keen not to replicate similar mass demonstrations.
“We are Anonymous, we are your citizens, we are the people, we do not tolerate oppression from any government agency,” the hackers said on its website, encouraging mass disruption of Monday’s evening commute, called ‘OpBART,’ reports MSNBC.
“BART has proved multiple times that they have no problem exploiting and abusing the people.”
Anonymous also thanked people who attended the BART demo:”Thank you all who attended #OpBART protest and keeping it real and peaceful,” it wrote on the ‘Anonymous Press’ Twitter account.
Only last week, Anonymous said it intends to destroy Facebook on Guy Fawkes night, November 05, accusing Mark Zuckerberg’s brainchild of “selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so that they can spy on people from all around the world.”
