Skip to main content

Anonymous steals 390MB from U.S. cybersecurity contractor ManTech

antisecAnonymous’ campaign against the FBI has shown no sign of relenting, despite the climbing number of global hacker arrests. A group claiming they’re Anonymous is saying they’ve stolen documents from a big U.S. cybersecurity contractor connected to the FBI, as well as many other government agencies.

As promised via tweet early Friday morning, Anonymous released seized documents from defense contractor ManTech international. The batch, released on the Pirate Bay, contained 390 megabytes of data; supposedly internal data from ManTech. The FBI apparently outsourced their cybersecurity to the contractor last year in a deal costing $100 million.

Recommended Videos

ManTech services more than one federal agency, and the data in this first release is a mixed batch with a slight focus on NATO. Along with the FBI and NATO, ManTech’s clients include the departments of Defense, State, Justice, NSA, U.S. military extensions, Homeland Security as well as NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The cybersecurity contractor has yet to make a direct statement about Anonymous, though they’ve posted this message on their website: “All organizations attract cyber threats in our highly networked world…[however] ManTech takes seriously recent reports of a cyber threat, and we responsibly and actively address all sources of information about threats to our information and assets and those of our customers.”

Along with the data dump, the Anonymous statement points out that ManTech was involved with the Operation MetalGear project along with HBGary, Palantir, Endgames and the recently hit defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. MetalGear was a project which would supposedly set up fake online personas for the federal government to spy and manipulate citizens.

Anonymous isn’t showing signs of backing down, evidenced recently by the immediate attack on Italian police in response to European arrests of hackers. The group taunts Government and Law Enforcement at the end of their statement, saying that Anonymous cannot be stopped and implying that U.S. CERT director Randy Vickers resigned to avoid a losing battle.

In closing they boast “we are not scared anymore and your threats to arrest us are meaningless. We will continue to demonstrate how you fail at about every aspect of cybersecurity while burning hundreds of millions of dollars that you do not even have.”

Jeff Hughes
Former Digital Trends Contributor
I'm a SF Bay Area-based writer/ninja that loves anything geek, tech, comic, social media or gaming-related.
How to change margins in Google Docs
Laptop Working from Home

When you create a document in Google Docs, you may need to adjust the space between the edge of the page and the content -- the margins. For instance, many professors have requirements for the margin sizes you must use for college papers.

You can easily change the left, right, top, and bottom margins in Google Docs and have a few different ways to do it.

Read more
What is Microsoft Teams? How to use the collaboration app
A close-up of someone using Microsoft Teams on a laptop for a videoconference.

Online team collaboration is the new norm as companies spread their workforce across the globe. Gone are the days of primarily relying on group emails, as teams can now work together in real time using an instant chat-style interface, no matter where they are.

Using Microsoft Teams affords video conferencing, real-time discussions, document sharing and editing, and more for companies and corporations. It's one of many collaboration tools designed to bring company workers together in an online space. It’s not designed for communicating with family and friends, but for colleagues and clients.

Read more
Microsoft Word vs. Google Docs
A person using a laptop that displays various Microsoft Office apps.

For the last few decades, Microsoft Word has been the de facto standard for word processors across the working world. That's finally starting to shift, and it looks like one of Google's productivity apps is the heir apparent. The company's Google Docs solution (or to be specific, the integrated word processor) is cross-platform and interoperable, automatically syncs, is easily shareable, and perhaps best of all, is free.

However, using Google Docs proves it still has a long way to go before it can match all of Word's features -- Microsoft has been developing its word processor for over 30 years, after all, and millions still use Microsoft Word. Will Google Docs' low barrier to entry and cross-platform functionality win out? Let's break down each word processor in terms of features and capabilities to help you determine which is best for your needs.
How does each word processing program compare?
To put it lightly, Microsoft Word has an incredible advantage over Google Docs in terms of raw technical capability. From relatively humble beginnings in the 1980s, Microsoft has added new tools and options in each successive version. Most of the essential editing tools are available in Google Docs, but users who are used to Word will find it limited.

Read more