On Sunday, hackers launched an attack against Bay Area Rapid Transit's (BART) website. The hacktivist group, "Anonymous", took control of mybart.org for approximately six hours, defacing their website and publishing the real names, emails, phone numbers, account names and passwords of 2,400 users. Interestingly, bart.gov itself was left untouched, however a few other municipal websites such as californiaavoid.org were not so lucky.
Sunday's "Operation: BART" cyber attack was prompted by BART's controversial decision to black-out cellular service along their transit lines, an act intended to prevent an anticipated protest from materializing last Thursday. The protest itself was a response against a recent BART police shooting. The public transit organization did not jam the towers but actually had them disabled, technically remaining compliant with FCC regulations, however the move left Anonymous members outraged, comparing the scenario to recent Midd
Anonymous also critized the organization's security. Hackers found user account information unencrypted, stored as unhashed plain text with little between the database and the web.
Since the original protest plans were foiled due to the cellular black-out, the group is helping to organize a new one. Anonymous is appealing to the public, including individuals who had their accounts publicly revealed, to join them on Monday around 5:00pm at the Civic Center station in San Francisco.
They kindly note to "bring your mask" to the event. Somewhat ominously, Anonymous also tweeted, "Have a feeling that at tomorrows protest the police radios may get the #BART treatment: #Jammed #rfjam #JS #OpBART".
As if that were not enough, Anonymous has also asked the public to participate in what is billed as a "Black fax and E-Mail Bomb". Supporters are to fax and email BART employees until they "explode their inboxes". The hacktivist group has also conveniently provided the email addresses of every staff member, including the janitor.
