UK, US Officials and NATO Advisers Exposed After Stratfor Hack

The latest information regarding the hacking operation Anonymous launched against Stratfor reveals that sensitive data belonging to US and British officials, some of which employed in highly sensitive areas, ended up in the hands of the cybercriminals.

According to The Guardian, email addresses and encrypted passwords of 221 UK military officials, 242 members of NATO, and other individuals that work for governments were exposed.

The figures show that an important part of the 800,000 victims are employed by government organizations.

John Bumgarner of the US Cyber Consequences Unit identified that 19,000 email addresses belonging to US military personnel are in the leaked database, around 350 of the soldiers being deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When it comes to UK officials that have become victims, 23 work in the houses of parliament, 7 from the Cabinet Office, 45 from the Foreign Office, 14 are with the Home office and 67 with Scotland Yard. Even a couple of employees from the royal household are on the victim list.

“We are aware that subscriber details for the Stratfor website have been published in the public domain. At present, there is no indication of any threat to UK government systems. Advice and guidance on such threats is issued to government departments through the Government Computer Emergency Response Team,” a government spokesperson said.

In the meantime, other than trying to secure their systems and making sure their customers are protected against cybercriminal operations, Stratfor is dealing with another unfortunate situation.

A malicious phishing email began circulating, targeting more sensitive information belonging to their clients. The phony message seems to come from the company’s CEO and urges recipients to fill in a form that comes attached to the email.

Stratfor released an official warning and advised users to be on the lookout for any suspicious emails that require sensitive information.