About 70 police websites hacked; most are rural

An anonymous group "hacked into some 70 mostly rural law enforcement websites in the United States," leaking sensitive information about at least one ongoing police investigation, Raphael Satter of The Associated Press reported.

Dick Mackey, vice president of consulting at Sudbury, Mass.-based SystemExperts, told Nomaan Merchant of AP for a follow-up story, "The smaller the organization, the more likely that they don't think of themselves as potential targets. They're not going to have the protections in place that a larger organization will have."

The majority of the attacks were on websites hosted by Brooks-Jeffrey Marketing, a media hosting company based in Mountain Home, Ark., Merchant reports. "If Brooks-Jeffrey's defenses were breached, that would give hackers access to every website the company hosted," Kevin Mitnick, a security consultant and former hacker told Merchant. (Read more)

The attackers claimed their motive was retaliation for arrests of sympathizers.