Energy & Environment

Anonymous claims to leak Paris climate officials’ data

The hacker group Anonymous claims to have released the personal log-in details of roughly 1,415 officials at the United Nations climate conference in Paris.

The release was apparently done to protest the recent detention of activists during a climate march in Paris on Sunday. Over 200 people were arrested after clashing with riot police.

{mosads}Members of the loosely affiliated hacking collective posted the alleged data on text-sharing site Pastebin. The dump includes names, emails, usernames, passwords, phone numbers and security questions and answers.

Officials from a broad swath of countries, including the United States, China, France, Germany, India and the United Kingdom, were all included.

According to The Guardian, the activist hackers pilfered the data by infiltrating the website for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which organized the multi-week talks on climate change. A security expert who reviewed the incident said the digital intruders exploited an old vulnerability in the password encryption on the UNFCCC site.

Following the outburst at Sunday’s protest, French President François Hollande lambasted the violence as “scandalous” since it occurred at Place de la Republique, which has been a memorial for the victims of the recent terror attacks, Tthe Associated Press reported.

Anonymous has generated a spate of headlines in recent weeks with its digital crusades against the Ku Klux Klan and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In both campaigns, the hacking group has been criticized for leaking either incorrect data or information that is already publicly available.