Anonymous Hacks Finland 129
First time accepted submitter spuguli writes with more exploits of Anonymous. "From Helsingin Sanomat: 'A data leak was uncovered in Finland on Saturday, in which personal details ... of around 16,000 people were uploaded onto a file-sharing website.' Anonymous has claimed responsibility for the cracking of several databases."
Leak, not a hack (Score:5, Interesting)
Bit of background: Finland has pretty strict privacy laws, and compiling personal detail lists, such as this, is subject to regulation. Very few care about that. What really matters is that storing such lists has certain requirements - and disseminating them is explicitly unlawful.
The leaked list is apparently a compilation of 10 (or more) smaller lists. Criminal Bureau are going after the person who compiled and published the list, and the morons who compiled the original lists will probably get off with less than a slap on their wrists.
The original compilations have been passed around via mailing lists. I'll let that sink in.
[Puts on the cynic hat]
What should be a wake-up call to enforce the collection and dissemination rules will be used to drum up the threat of Anonymous and increased possibility to get spammed. The real problem, namely the near-criminal negligence with which this type of data is handled, will be ignored.
In a nutshell: someone who had access to multiple lists exposed a systematic indifference to privacy laws and the utter ignorance of decent practices. The leak itself will be vilified, while the practices which allowed this to happen with such trivial effort are unlikely to be addressed.