Baxter County Newspaper

Anonymous attacks US sheriffs' websites

The group of hackers known as Anonymous says it has hacked into about 70 mostly rural law enforcement websites in the US, a data breach that at least one local police chief said leaked sensitive information about an ongoing investigation.

The loose-knit international hacking collective posted a cache of data to the internet early on Saturday, including emails stolen from officers, tips that appeared to come from members of the public, credit card numbers and other information.

Anonymous said it had stolen 10 gigabytes worth of data in retaliation for the arrests of its sympathisers in the US and Britain.

Tim Mayfield, a police chief in Gassville, Arkansas, told the Associated Press that some of the material posted online – including pictures of teenage girls in swimsuits – was sent to him as part of an ongoing investigation. He declined to provide more details.

Mayfield's comments were the first indication that the hack might be serious. Since news of some kind of cyber-attack first filtered out less than a week ago, various police officials said they were unaware of the hacking or dismissed it as nothing to worry about.

Though many of the leaked emails appeared benign, some of the stolen material carried sensitive information, including tips about suspected crimes, profiles of gang members and security training.

The emails were mainly from sheriffs' offices in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Mississippi. Many of the websites were operated by a media services hosting company in Mountain Home, Arkansas, and most, if not all, were either unavailable on Saturday or had been wiped clean of content. The company, Brooks-Jeffrey Marketing, declined to comment.

In a statement, Anonymous said it had leaked "a massive amount of confidential information that is sure to [embarrass], discredit and incriminate police officers across the US". The group said it hoped the disclosures would "demonstrate the inherently corrupt nature of law enforcement using their own words" and "disrupt and sabotage their ability to communicate and terrorise communities".

The group did not say specifically why these sheriffs' departments were targeted, but Anonymous members have increasingly been pursued by law enforcement in the United States and elsewhere following a string of high-profile data thefts and denial of service attacks – operations that block websites by flooding them with traffic.

Last month, the FBI and British and Dutch officials made 21 arrests, many of them related to the group's attacks on the internet payment provider PayPal, which was targeted over its refusal to process donations to WikiLeaks. Anonymous also claims credit for disrupting the websites of Visa and MasterCard in December when the credit card companies stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange.

The Kent County News - Chestertown, MD > Sports > Baxter trainee ...

BERLIN -- While the harness racing scene is quiet at Dover Downs and Harrington Raceway in Delaware through much of the summer, the action truly heated up at Ocean Downs last week. The seaside oval located five miles west of Ocean City offered two nights of racing designed to highlight the Mary-land Standardbred Breeding Program, and several horses with Mid-Shore connections were on hand. Last Thursday evening, Montabello Brandi (Vince Copeland) finished a solid second in a $14,675 Maryland Standardbred Race Fund event for 3-year-old filly trotters. A daughter of Super Punk owned, bred and trained by Jay Baxter of Worton, Montabello Brandi rallied from midpack early to finish second behind odds-on favorite My Baby Momma (Jonathan Roberts). Baxter's horse was beaten five lengths in a good effort considering that she had not raced in two weeks.

Baxter County, Arkansas, Mountain Home, Arkansas, Briarcliff, Arkansas, Norfork, Arkansas, Lakeview, Arkansas, Cotter, Arkansas, Salesville

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