FBI agents have reportedly raided homes in Merrick, Baldwin and Brooklyn in an ongoing investigation into the notorious hacker group known as Anonymous.
FBI spokesman Jim Margolin said agents searched residences and seized computers at one address in Brooklyn and three on Long Island. He declined further comment. The targets of the searches were not named.
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FoxNews.com first reported the raids in New York and, citing an unnamed source, said there were more than a dozen simultaneous search warrants executed in relation to the same probe in New Jersey, Florida and California.
Anonymous is a loosely organized group of hackers that has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks against corporate and government websites around the world.
The group claims credit for disrupting the websites of Visa and Mastercard in December when the credit card companies stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange.
It is known for attacks on the Church of Scientology, Playstation Network and media properties owned by Fox News’ parent company, News Corp., which is under scrutiny for alleged hacking of its own.
The raids come after the self-described “hacktivists” stole tens of thousands of encrypted military passwords from U.S. contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and posted them online last week.
In a statement posted to the Web, the Anonymous hackers boasted of stealing passwords linked to some 90,000 military users, although The Associated Press counted only about 67,000 unique email addresses, of which about 53,000 carried “.mil” domains.
The rest appeared to be affiliated with educational institutions or defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin Corp. or SAIC.
The Pentagon said in a statement that it was aware of the incident and coordinating with other federal partners on the matter. It didn’t immediately respond when asked whether affected personnel had been ordered to change their passwords.
Booz Allen posted a message on Twitter shortly after the hack was announced, saying that its security policy meant it didn’t usually comment on threats or attacks against its systems.
The hackers taunted the company in response.
“You have a security policy?” they said. “We never noticed.”
A spokesman for the Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. did not offer any further comment.
-With Associated Press.
