US Federal Reserve admits to Anonymous website attack

THE UNITED STATES Federal Reserve has admitted that one of its internal websites was hacked.

Reuters reports that the US Federal Reserve confirmed that a security breach had occurred but said that no critical functions or key data were compromised.

"The Federal Reserve system is aware that information was obtained by exploiting a temporary vulnerability in a website vendor product," a Federal Reserve spokeswoman said.

"Exposure was fixed shortly after discovery and is no longer an issue. This incident did not affect critical operations of the Federal Reserve system."

At the time of publishing the Federal Reserve had not responded to The INQUIRER's request for comment on the attack.

Meanwhile, Anonymous has claimed that the attackers successfully stole the personal information of more than 4,000 US bank executives.

The hacktivist group issued a statement via Twitter claiming to have leaked the information.

Now we have your attention America: Anonymous's Superbowl Commercial 4k banker d0x via the FED acjic.alabama.gov/documents/oops… #opLastResort #Anonymous

— OpLastResort (@OpLastResort) February 4, 2013

The information posted reportedly included bank employees' login information, credentials, IP addresses and contact information.

Anonymous' statement credited the attack as being part of its ongoing Oplastresort campaign. This was started in January in protest against the treatment of internet activist and Reddit founder Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide last month.

Swartz was facing trial on charges that he had stolen over four million articles from the JSTOR online archive and journal distribution service.

Prior to the attack on the Federal Reserve, hackers operating under the Anonymous banner also claimed responsibility for an attack on the US Department of Justice website. µ

This article was originally published on V3.