Cyber criminals are often painted as the scourge of the Internet – rifling through personal data – but a new report shows over half of all data thefts last year were actually carried out by hacktivists, making an ideological statement.
An analysis of 855 data breaches by Verizon found 174 million records were stolen through hacking, viruses and other electronic intrusions in 2011, the second-highest since its Data Breach Investigations Report began in 2004.
But 58% of those were stolen by the likes of Anonymous and Lulzsec, due in part to a handful of very large breaches involving tens of millions of items of email, customer data or payment information.
This move is in sharp contrast to previous years when the vast majority of attacks were conducted by financially motivated criminals.
The report collates information from Verizon’s clients as well as from law enforcement groups in the UK, US, Australia, Ireland and Holland.
Anonymous, which says it campaigns for free speech online and other libertarian causes, and its splinter groups Lulzsec and Antisec, were behind a number of high-profile attacks on Sony, Nintendo, the Central Intelligence Agency and the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Unit.
These groups targeted a different kind of information, with 95% of data stolen involving personally identifiable information last year, compared with 1% in the previous year. In 2010, 96% of records stolen were payment cards.
Branding 2011 the “year of the hacktivist”, Wade Baker, Verizon’s director of risk intelligence, said last year may prove to be a high water-mark for such attacks.
“They’ve managed to arrest quite a few people,” he added. “When that happens there is a crackdown. I think that is going to have an effect, but Anonymous is a movement not a group – it’s harder to bust up.”
