High-profile names on hackers’ list

WASHINGTON – A computer-hacking group has revealed email addresses and other personal data of former Vice President Dan Quayle, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and hundreds of U.S. intelligence, law enforcement and military officials in a high-profile case of cybertheft.

The unauthorized release of account information for 860,000 subscribers to Stratfor, a Texas-based company that provides analysis of national and international affairs, makes it possible to identify some subscribers, and in theory, impersonate them in cyberspace, analysts warned.

The data were released in two batches last month by the AntiSec faction of Anonymous, a self-described hacker collective. It also disclosed some 75,000 names, addresses and credit card numbers associated with Stratfor customers, including Kissinger and Quayle. They did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

“The exposure is huge,” said John Bumgarner, who analyzed the release for the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, an independent, nonprofit research institute. “We can assume that a foreign intelligence service has already taken advantage of this information.”

Anonymous engages in what it calls civil disobedience to expose secrets but others have called Internet terrorism.