Tech Talk

The FBI sent an email warning Friday evening to officials across America warning them of a potential attack on financial and law enforcement entities by the hacking group Anonymous.

The email, which Tech Talk has obtained a copy of, reports that Anonymous announced a nationwide “Day of Vengence” in dozens of cities across the U.S. beginning at “High Noon” on Sept. 24, stating:

In coordination with these protests across the USA on September 24th, Anonymous and other cyber liberation groups will launch a series of cyber attacks against various targets including Wall Street, Corrupt Banking Institutions – and the NYC Police Department. We encourage the media to follow the Twitter feed @PLF2012 for ongoing reports throughout the day.

The FBI warns that public and private entities associated with the recent execution of Troy Davis in the state of Georgia may also be targed, as well as additional law enforcement agencies.

The federal agency did not release any additional information about the threat, including to the specific nature or means.

However, the FBI did cite history as a potential guide:

[I]n the past, Anonymous has engaged in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, utilized SQL injection to gain unauthorized access to computer systems, conducted social engineering to gather personal identifying information, and released both personal information (i.e. “doxing”) and the contents of compromised systems (e.g. e-mail message content, passwords, etc.).

The FBI encouraged agencies to use strong, unique passwords, to update software to protect against known vulnerabilities and ensure that Web-based applications are not at risk to attacks, such as SQL injection.