Crime Stoppers website hacked

Hackers have broken into the Crime Stoppers website and published what they claim is a list of police and government email addresses and encrypted passwords, with an Indonesian group saying the attack was retaliation for Australia’s attempts to spy on their president.

The hack follows the recent reported attacks by Indonesian hackers on the websites of the AFP and the RBA.

Crime Stoppers’ deputy chairman Peter Price said, “The website was hacked on the front public face and pages.”

“We were alerted by the Department of Defence, which monitors the security of the website.

“And so on Friday we decided to close down the email server. [On Monday] we decided to actually bring down the whole website in its entirety,” Price said.

According to the ABC, an Indonesian group called BlackSinChan posted on Facebook saying that the attack was retaliation for Australia’s attempts to tap the phones of the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, his wife and other top Indonesian officials.

“This is the payback for spying [on] Indonesia!” the group’s Facebook post reportedly said.

“We love Australia. We love our country. But stop spying at my country. And remember, this is not for famous. This is for payback. We will be back,” it said.

But it’s unclear how much of the information the hackers posted is legitimate, with Price indicating that at least some of it was false.

“We don’t know what some of these passwords are - we have never seen them,” AAP reported Price as saying.

According to The Guardian, Price said there was “nothing classified” about the emails and passwords that had been hacked, and no classified information had been hacked in the attack, but he would not divulge how far into the system the hackers had gotten.

“The most important information sits behind a federal government firewall,” Price said. “This is monitored and protected by the Department of Defence. There was no penetration to that at all.”

Price reportedly described the attack as an “intimidation tactic”, saying it was more like “throwing a rock through a shop window rather than robbing the shop itself”.

People can still contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 while the website is down.