WikiLeaks to release Stratfor e-mails following December hack

Hacktivist website WikiLeaks said it planned to release over 5 million e-mails from Stratfor Global Intelligence, a provider of geopolitical analysis, whose website was hacked last December.

The website said the e-mails date from between July 2004 and late December 2011, and allegedly contain privileged information about the US government’s attacks against WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, and Stratfor’s own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks. They also allegedly reveal controversial practices by Stratfor in cultivating sources, and targeting of individuals for corporate and government clients.

Stratfor in Austin, Texas said in a statement that mails stolen during the December hack apparently will be published. "This is a deplorable, unfortunate – and illegal – breach of privacy," it said. "Some of the e-mails may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic. We will not validate either."

WikiLeaks did not disclose its source for the e-mails it is leaking to over 25 media outlets and activists. Hacker group Anonymous, however, said in a Twitter message that it gave the Stratfor e-mails to WikiLeaks. Transparency, whether forced or voluntary, is a necessity to understand our world, it said.

Stratfor said in January that it got an alert in December that its website had been hacked and customer credit card and other information had been stolen by Anonymous. Its website was hacked again on 24 December.

Stratfor denied the hackers’ claim that the data was a list of "private clients" but rather a list of members who may have purchased a publication.

IDG News Service

Read More: Anonymous Hacktivism Wikileaks