BlueLeaks

Protestor wearing Guy Fawkes mask in front of police

BlueLeaks, sometimes referred to by the Twitter hashtag #BlueLeaks, refers to 269.21 gibibytes of internal U.S. law enforcement data obtained by the hacker collective Anonymous and released on June 19, 2020, by the activist group Distributed Denial of Secrets, which called it the "largest published hack of American law enforcement agencies".[1]

The data — internal intelligence, bulletins, emails, and reports — was produced between August 1996 and June 2020[2] by more than 200 law enforcement agencies, which provided it to fusion centers. It was obtained through a security breach of Netsential, a web developer that works with fusion centers and law enforcement.

The leaks were released at hunter.ddosecrets.com and announced on the @DDoSecrets Twitter account. The account was banned shortly after for "dissemination of hacked materials" and "information that could have put individuals at risk of real-world harm."[3] Wired reported that Distributed Denial of Secrets attempted to remove sensitive information from the data before publication. National Fusion Center Association (NFCA) officials confirmed the authenticity of the data, according to documents obtained by security journalist Brian Krebs; the organization warned its members that hackers may use the leaked information to target them.[4]

  1. ^ Karlis, Nicole (June 22, 2020). "Inside "Blue Leaks," a trove of hacked police documents released by Anonymous". Salon. Archived from the original on June 23, 2020. Retrieved June 24, 2020.
  2. ^ "'BlueLeaks' Exposes Files from Hundreds of Police Departments — Krebs on Security". Krebs on Security. June 22, 2020. Archived from the original on June 22, 2020. Retrieved June 22, 2020.
  3. ^ Cimpanu, Catalin (June 23, 2020). "Twitter bans DDoSecrets account over 'BlueLeaks' police data dump". ZDNet. Archived from the original on June 24, 2020. Retrieved June 24, 2020.
  4. ^ Greenberg, Andy (June 22, 2020). "Anonymous Stole and Leaked a Megatrove of Police Documents". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Archived from the original on June 23, 2020. Retrieved June 24, 2020.