LONDON - A sensitive conference call between FBI and British police's
cybercrime investigators was recorded by the very people they were
trying to catch, officials and hackers said Friday.
British police say the intercepted phone call poses no
immediate risk to operations.
It said it was still assessing the breach and noted that the FBI was investigating.
Hacking
collective Anonymous published a roughly 15-minute-long recording of a
conference call apparently devoted to tracking and prosecuting members
of the loosely-knit group.
The FBI said the information "was intended for law enforcement officers only and was illegally obtained."
A YouTube video alleged to be the real thing, uploaded by "TheDigitalfolklore," plays the audio recording here:
"A criminal investigation is under way to identify and hold accountable those responsible," the bureau said in a statement.
It's
not clear how the hackers got their hands on the recording, which
appears to have been edited to bleep out the names of some of the
suspects being discussed.
"The FBI might be curious how we're able
to continuously read their internal comms for some time now," the group
gloated in a message posted to Twitter.
Amid the material
published by Anonymous was a message purportedly sent by an FBI agent to
international law enforcement agencies. It invites his foreign
counterparts to join the call to "discuss the ongoing investigations
related to Anonymous ... and other associated splinter groups." The
email contained a phone number and password for accessing the call.
The
email is addressed to officials in the U.K., Ireland, the Netherlands,
Sweden and France, but only American and British officials can be heard
on the recording.
Graham Cluley, an expert with data security
company Sophos, said that hackers had been able to eavesdrop on the call
because they had compromised an investigator's emails.
"No doubt
the police authorities will be appalled to realize that the very people
that they are trying to apprehend, could have been tuning in to their
internal conversations," he wrote in a blog post.
An email to the
FBI agent who sent the email was not immediately returned, while one of
the British investigators on the call referred questions to Scotland
Yard's press office.
The press office said it was still working on a statement.
The
recorded discussion itself appears sensitive. Those on the call talk
about what legal strategy to pursue in the cases of Ryan Cleary and Jake
Davis — two British suspects linked to Anonymous — and discuss details
of the evidence gathered against other suspects.
Karen Todner, a
lawyer for Cleary, said that the recording could be "incredibly
sensitive" and warned that such data breaches had the potential to
derail the police's work.
"If they haven't secured their email it could potentially prejudice the investigation," she told The Associated Press.
Anonymous
is an amorphous collection of Internet enthusiasts, pranksters and
activists whose targets have included the Church of Scientology, the
music industry, and financial companies such as Visa and MasterCard.
Following
a spate of arrests across the world, the group and its various
offshoots have focused their attention on law enforcement agencies in
general and the FBI in particular.
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