Hacktivist group Anonymous said Thursday that it is sitting on a large amount of sensitive information belonging to the North American Treaty Organization (NATO).
The collective said on Twitter that it siphoned about 1 gigabyte (GB) of data from the servers of NATO, but said it would be "irresponsible" to publish the trove. The group used an injection-style attack in order to gain access, according to another tweet.
A NATO spokesperson could not be reached, but according to published reports, a representative condemned the attacks and said the organization is investigating.
Anonymous used the hack as proof that it wasn't going away, despite arrests earlier this week of more than a dozen people linked to the operation.
"We are not scared any more," Anonymous and sister group LulzSec said in a joint news release. "Your threats to arrest us are meaningless to us as you cannot arrest an idea. Any attempt to do so will make your citizens more angry until they will roar in one gigantic choir."
The release came in direct response to an interview between NPR and an FBI official.
"We want to send a message that chaos on the internet is unacceptable," Steven Chabinsky, deputy assistant FBI director, told NPR. "[Even if] hackers can be believed to have social causes, it's entirely unacceptable to break into websites and commit unlawful acts."
Meanwhile, LulzSec, which has returned to the scene despite announcing its retirement in late June, claimed to be in possession of multiple gigabytes of emails belonging to The Sun and now-defunct News of the World, both properties of Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire has come under fire due to a phone-hacking scandal.
"We're currently working with certain media outlets who have been granted exclusive access to some of the News of the World emails we have," the group tweeted.
Meanwhile, an effort appears to be underway here and in the U.K. to provide legal counsel for Anonymous members who were arrested this week.
"There may be some interesting surprises on the way regarding the caliber of the U.S. lawyers who will be [representing] the Anons," tweeted Barrett Brown, a former Anonymous unofficial spokesman who heads the group Project PM.
