Dallas’ finest have been knocked offline by that most sinister of all criminals. No, not a crazed violent felon or a serial predator.
A computer hacker.
Over the weekend, according to the Dallas Police Department, the agency noticed late Sunday that the names and passwords of several Dallas PD employees had been posted online.
Today is Wednesday, but a visit to the department’s Web site goes nowhere, as in, ‘unavailable at this time.’
Deputy Chief Randy Blankenbaker downplayed the troublesome mischief to NBC 5 in Dallas-Fort Worth: “It was a small number of employees and, at this point, there is no indication anybody saw the information. We have some folks that keep an eye on things that are open-sourced, like Facebook and Twitter, and do searches to see things being discussed about the Dallas Police Department.”
The damage must have been fairly extensive, since the site shows no signs of coming back.
News reports have connected the incident to a hacking group calling itself Anonymous, which last week hacked the site of the Texas Police Association's website and published the names and home addresses of 700 Texas police officers.
That site is now back up.
But Anonymous has been much heavier than the small stuff; the group has also hacked FBI phone calls. It also vowed to take down Facebook at one point.
Over the weekend, according to the Dallas Police Department, the agency noticed late Sunday that the names and passwords of several Dallas PD employees had been posted online.
Today is Wednesday, but a visit to the department’s Web site goes nowhere, as in, ‘unavailable at this time.’
Deputy Chief Randy Blankenbaker downplayed the troublesome mischief to NBC 5 in Dallas-Fort Worth: “It was a small number of employees and, at this point, there is no indication anybody saw the information. We have some folks that keep an eye on things that are open-sourced, like Facebook and Twitter, and do searches to see things being discussed about the Dallas Police Department.”
The damage must have been fairly extensive, since the site shows no signs of coming back.
News reports have connected the incident to a hacking group calling itself Anonymous, which last week hacked the site of the Texas Police Association's website and published the names and home addresses of 700 Texas police officers.
That site is now back up.
But Anonymous has been much heavier than the small stuff; the group has also hacked FBI phone calls. It also vowed to take down Facebook at one point.
***
Contact Steve Miller at 832-303-9420 or stevemiller@texaswatchdog.org.
Keep up with all the latest news from Texas Watchdog. Fan our page on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Scribd, and fan us on YouTube. Join our network on de.licio.us, and put our RSS feeds in your newsreader. We're also on MySpace, Digg, FriendFeed, and tumblr.
Photo of PC guts by flickr user animakitty, used via a Creative Commons license.
Contact Steve Miller at 832-303-9420 or stevemiller@texaswatchdog.org.
Keep up with all the latest news from Texas Watchdog. Fan our page on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and Scribd, and fan us on YouTube. Join our network on de.licio.us, and put our RSS feeds in your newsreader. We're also on MySpace, Digg, FriendFeed, and tumblr.
Photo of PC guts by flickr user animakitty, used via a Creative Commons license.
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