F.B.I. Admits Hacker Group’s Eavesdropping

The international hackers group known as Anonymous turned the tables on the F.B.I. by listening in on a conference call last month between the bureau, Scotland Yard and other foreign police agencies about their joint investigation of the group and its allies. 

Anonymous posted a 16-minute recording of the conference call on the Web on Friday and crowed about the episode in via Twitter: “The FBI might be curious how we’re able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now.”

An F.B.I. official said Anonymous had not in fact hacked into the conference call or any other bureau facilities. Instead, the official said, the group had obtained an e-mail giving the time, telephone number and access code for the call. The e-mail had been sent on Jan. 13 to more than three dozen people at the bureau, Scotland Yard, and agencies in France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden. One of the recipients, a foreign police official, evidently forwarded the notification to a private account, he said, and it was then intercepted by Anonymous. 

“It’s not really that sophisticated,” said the official, who would discuss the episode only on condition of anonymity. He said no Federal Bureau of Investigation system was compromised but noted that communications security was more challenging when agencies in multiple countries were involved.

“We’re always looking at ways to make our communications more secure, and obviously we’ll be taking a look at what happened here,” he said. 

The bureau issued a brief statement confirming the intrusion, which was first reported by The Associated Press: “The information was intended for law enforcement officers only and was illegally obtained. A criminal investigation is under way to identify and hold accountable those responsible.” 

The breach, clearly an embarrassment for investigators, is the latest chapter in a continuing war of words and contest of technology between hacking groups and their perceived opponents in law enforcement and the corporate world. 

The F.B.I. e-mail titled “Anon-Lulz International Coordination Call” — a reference to Anonymous and to an allied group of hackers, Lulz Security — announced a conference call for investigators “to discuss the on-going investigations related to Anonymous, Lulzsec, Antisec, and other associated splinter groups.”

The recording posted on YouTube and elsewhere on the Web included American and British voices discussing suspects in the case. The call begins with banter between an American named Bruce and British officials named Stewart or Stuart and Matt, who are joined by another official from F.B.I. headquarters, Timothy F. Lauster Jr., who sent the e-mail announcing the conference call. 

A British official refers to Ryan Cleary and Jake Davis, two British teenagers who have been arrested and are wanted in the United States on suspicion of ties to Anonymous. The British official describes a 325-page report analyzing Ryan Cleary’s hard drive, and an F.B.I. agent in Los Angeles discusses various suspects and their nicknames. 

The investigators also refer to several suspects who had not yet been arrested, including one described by the British official as “a 15-year-old kid who’s basically just doing this all for attention and is a bit of an idiot.” 

The conversation was part of an international criminal investigation that began in 2010 after Anonymous championed WikiLeaks by mounting electronic attacks on Mastercard and PayPal and other sites that had stopped collecting donations for the antisecrecy organization. 

Last month, Anonymous attacked the Web sites of the Justice Department and major entertainment companies in retaliation for criminal charges against the founders of Megaupload, a popular Internet service used to transfer music and movies anonymously. 

http://www.nytimes.com