BART Prepares For New Protests After Website Hacking
OAKLAND (CBS/AP) – Bay Area Rapid Transit prepared for renewed protests Monday, a day after hackers broke into a BART user website and posted contact information for more than 2,000 customers.
The action by a hacker group known as Anonymous was the latest showdown between anarchists angry at perceived attempts to limit free speech by cutting cellphone service at some transit stations and officials trying to control protests that grow out of social networking.
KCBS' Tim Ryan Reports:
Anonymous announced its intention to hack BART websites in a posting on its website.
The shadowy hacker group said that it is already engaged in a phone, email and fax campaign to disrupt BART's operations, and has said that there will be a live protest in the Civic Center BART station Monday at 5 p.m.
Anonymous posted names, phone numbers, and street and email addresses of some 2,400 users of the myBART.org website on its own site, while also calling for a disruption Monday's evening commute.
The myBART website remained down while the agency worked to secure it, BART spokesman Jim Allison said. Allison said it would not resume operations until officials were confident users' data was secure.
BART officials said Sunday that they were working a strategy to try to block any efforts by protesters to try to disrupt the service.
KCBS' Bob Butler Reports:
The hacker protest was made in response to BART's decision to interrupt wireless cellphone service in several downtown San Francisco BART stations to prevent a disruptive protest on Thursday. Organizers had planned a protest over the July shooting of an apparent drunken and belligerent passenger by BART police.
Allison said that BART is working with federal officials to respond to the attacks and to prevent any future security breaches. He said that any myBART.org users that have had their information stolen should not open any unsolicited emails and immediately change any passwords that my have been shared with their myBART.org account.
Allison noted that BART's website infrastructure is not connected to the computer systems that run the trains themselves, and that the web attacks would not result in any service delays.
Another website not associated with BART, Californiaavoid.org was also hacked. California Avoid is a state-sponsored partnership of law enforcement organizations to prevent drunk driving.
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