A website of the Hertfordshire Constabulary was hacked and stolen data published online, the police force has confirmed today.
“Hertfordshire Constabulary is currently investigating the publication on the Internet of information stored on a database linked to the public Safer Neighbourhoods pages of the external website," it said in a statement issued today.
The BBC reports that the data included phone numbers and IP addresses relating to a number of officers. The force itself says that no personal data on officers or citizens was affected.
Interesting Links
The perpertrator published the data on anonymous text publication website Pastebin, and included a “OpFreeAssange” banner and added a quote from the WikiLeaks founder.
The Constabulary has taken down the breached section of the website “as a precaution” while it carries out the investigation. “[M]atters of IT security are extremely important to the Constabulary and an investigation is already underway," the spokesman said.
Assange has been living inside Ecuador’s London embassy since June 19 after requesting political asylum while facing extradition to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assault.
In recent weeks, computer hackers, including hacktivist group Anonymous, have staged a number of attacks against high profile government websites to protest against the handling of the Assange case.
Last week Reuters reported that one of the group’s attacks had succesfully taken the Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ) website offline.
"This is a public information website and no sensitive data is held on it. Measures put in place to keep the website running mean that some visitors may be unable to access the site intermittently," an MoJ spokeswoman told the news agency.
