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Houston Chronicle:

A cyber-attack on the email accounts of Texas police chiefs revealed the vulnerability even of the state's top cops and appears to have prompted a new investigation into a notorious hacking group.

The stealthy group known as Anonymous claimed responsibility for "Texas Takedown Thursday." The email accounts of 25 members of the Texas Police Chiefs Association were compromised and their contents posted online.

Anonymous explained it was attacking Texas law enforcement officials "as they continue to harass immigrants and use border patrol operations as a cover for their backwards racist prejudice."

"While many of our comrades facing charges and in prison are innocent, there is no such thing as an innocent police officer, and we will continue to directly attack the prison-industrial complex by leaking their private data, destroying their systems, and defacing their websites," Anonymous stated online.

The group placed 3 gigabytes of emails on a hidden server and posted the contents, which included racist emails to or from officers.

....

He said he received the email in 2008 and deleted it.

AG office: No comment

Asked late Friday if the breach would be pursued as a criminal matter, Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, replied, "We can't comment on an ongoing investigation."

Philip Hilder, a Houston defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, said the group's members could be prosecuted under Texas or federal laws prohibiting unauthorized access to computer systems.

"I think it just underscores how fast technology is moving and that really it seems that no system is above a potential breach," Hilder said.

White Collar Criminal Defense Attorney Philip Hilder quoted in Houston Chronicle article

James McLaughlin, executive director of the Texas Police Chiefs Association, said his group discovered its website had been hacked about 7:30 p.m. Thursday. That was hours after Anonymous had gone into the website and apparently accessed the membership list, which contained personal and in some cases professional email messages of members.

By the time McLaughlin's group was aware of the attack, some police chiefs had been notified their messages had been stolen and posted by friends and colleagues.

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http://www.chron.com/default/article/Hacking-exposes-holes-in-officers-Web-security-2153787.php

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