BART Website Hacked, Protest Planned for Evening Commute

By Erin Sherbert Mon., Aug. 15 2011 at 7:30 AM

Just call in sick today

The notorious hacker group, Anonymous, breached BART's website yesterday, releasing personal information of thousands of Bay Area commuters. On top of that, the group is now warning that it will disrupt transit service tonight during the evening commute.

So yeah, find a different way to work today.

The group broke into myBART.org, releasing names, numbers, addresses, phone numbers, and logins for thousands of BART riders. However the transit agency is still not certain exactly how many customers have been affected. However, a Twitter account linked to the group claims it hit more than 120,000 users. The site was up and running again Sunday night.

The security breach was in response to BART's ballsy move to cut cell-phone service, hoping to disrupt scheduled protests on Thursday evening.

BART riled the community when it admitted it interrupted cell service at four stations after learning that protesters were planning to user cellphone to coordinate efforts to disrupt the evening commute. The protest, which never came to fruition, was in response to the July 3 BART shooting of 45-year-old Charles Hill.

But BART only informed riders of this after the fact, and now experts are asking the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the transit agency's questionable actions.

Meanwhile, the hackers have rescheduled the protest for tonight at 5 p.m. -- and BART says it isn't opposed to disrupting cell service once again.

"The interruption of cell phone service was done Thursday to prevent what could have been a dangerous situation. It's one of the tactics we have at our disposal. We may use it; we may not. And I'm not sure we would necessarily let anyone know in advance either way," BART spokesman Jim Allison told the Chronicle.

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Tags:

Anonymous, BART, BART hack, Charles Hill, Federal Communications Commission, Jim Allison

We Recommend

Mandible M

Democracy Now! had great coverage of the protest on the show this morning. They interviewed activist as well as a member of the ACLU who talked about recent cell phone and internet crack downs. They even spoke with a member of the group Anonymous who helped hack the BART website. Here is the link to the interviews: http://www.democracynow.org/sh...

Whoseright

BART was wrong and now the Hackers are wrong, too And, 'two wrongs don't make a right' is still true.

Elizabeth Frantes

Anything you put online can be hacked and misused. It's your choice to put the info out there. What scares is is the rush to put all medical records online, which will make a lot of stalkers, grifters, and scammers very happy. What is most egregious is how much the medium is charging users to put their identity at risk, and the fact that for the most part, consumers are given no real choice. One can live "offline" and never risk ID theft, but it's very inconvenient.