No agenda, we’re just computer geeks: Legion

No agenda, we’re just computer geeks: Legion
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Highlights

The hacker group Legion which broke into the Twitter accounts of the Congress, its vice-president Rahul Gandhi, liquor baron Vijay Mallya and TV journalists Barkha Dutt and Ravish Kumar has finally come out in the open.

New York/New Delhi: The hacker group Legion which broke into the Twitter accounts of the Congress, its vice-president Rahul Gandhi, liquor baron Vijay Mallya and TV journalists Barkha Dutt and Ravish Kumar has finally come out in the open.

In an interview with The Washington Post on Monday -- through an encrypted instant-messaging software -- Legion said the group had access to servers like that of Apollo Hospitals and it was unsure about releasing data from those servers because it might cause ‘chaos’ in India.


Highlights:

  • Twitter hacker group claims it can hack Modi account
  • Says if we release data, it will create chaos in India

“Legion wasn’t even interested in political data until a few weeks ago. ...the group was in possession of several terabytes of raw data concerning all sorts of interests and that within that trove the hackers had identified gigabytes worth of information relating to Indian public figures,” the report quoted the user marked LC from ‘Legion Crew’ as saying.

“When I asked him how they came into possession of so much data, he was vague and said they just ended up with access to over 40k+ servers in India, and we decided -- hey, why not write a tool to sift through them for interesting data,” said Max Bearak, who writes about foreign affairs for the Washington Post.

“He said the data was choosing the targets for them, not the other way around. Whatever they were finding, they aimed to release. From Dutt’s Twitter account, they shared a link to a partial data dump of approximately 1.2 gigabytes of her emails,” Bearak said.

Legion has warned that their next target is former IPL chairman Lalit Modi. “As for upcoming targets, LC indicated that he and his fellow hackers had their sights set on bigger things,” the report said.

“Then again, he said, the hacking was taking away from precious time he’d rather spend doing drugs and making electronic music...

He said he particularly disliked spending time in India’s capital, New Delhi, and suggested that he might try to go to Russia -- to do some more drugs,” it added.

As they hacked the Twitter accounts from India, the group sought public support claiming that they will be doing more such cracking in the coming weeks. “Support Legion. We will bring you the info needed to bring these criminals to justice,” a tweet said earlier.

Legion sure seems confident about its ability to make way to others’ Twitter accounts. When we asked if, hypothetically, it could hack Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s account, the member replied with a "Yes."

What is more concerning is the amount of sensitive information the group is said to be sitting on. The group says it will release personal data of several individuals over the coming days. "Lots of them," it adds.

Legion says it is just getting started and India's public figures should be worried. What remains unclear at the moment, however, is the impact this is going to have on Twitter in what has largely been a forgetful year for the company.

One Legion member claimed that it has a bypass for Twitter two-factor authentication to get access to the account.

"We also use our Twitter 2FA (two-factor authentication) bypass to get access to the account, when needed," the member added.

"We have affiliations only with the Blackhat underground — our influence comes from el8, zf0, ac1db1tch3z, h0no (hacking groups) and the affiliated groups of Project Mayhem and it's sleeper cells like GoD," the Legion member said.

All the aforementioned groups have previously made public big holes in widely used services. Hacker group named "ac1db1tch3z", for instance, took responsibility for exploiting the Linux kernel in 2010.

Project Mayhem is a cult-like organization and has a mention in Brad Pitt starrer 1999 movie 'Fight Club'.

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