Anonymous, the loose-knit hacker collective, as many like to call them, managed to breach the main website belonging to ArcelorMittal, the largest steel producing company in the world, leaking a large quantity of information from their databases.

ArcelorMittal’s website (arcelormittal.com) is currently offline while the company’s IT department is probably patching up the wholes and assessing the damage caused by the hacktivists.

“We will fight with all the energy and all the computer resources we have forgotten to take part in this world and defend them against their torturer who operate in a way that we surnoise is unbearable,” Anonymous Belgium said in a video statement.

The group also apologizes to the media for confusing them with their lack of cooperation, but they claim that it is necessary for the “continuity and smooth operation and avoid leaks that could possibly harm [them].”

Several cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection vulnerabilities allowed the hackers to breach their website and leak information on their users and administrators.

By the looks of it, Anonymous Belgium means business. Only a couple of days have passed since they first threatened ArcelorMittal and now they’ve actually caused some serious damage to the company’s online infrastructure.

I said this before and I will take this opportunity to say it again. Recently, many companies have learned the hard way that these sorts of threats are not to be taken for granted, but as we clearly see, the warnings hacktivists release before they strike fall on deaf ears.

In the past few days, Anonymous launched a lot of threatening videos and if some of them may only remain simple threats, others become a reality.

A perfect example of a company that miserably fails to protect its websites and its customers is Sony, which received another blow from hackers who targeted them for supporting SOPA.