Anonymous posts 8GB of files after Italian government hack

Hacking group Anonymous has posted 8GB of material it claims to have gathered from the Italian government body responsible for computer crime.

Anonymous said that it had carried out the attack to expose corruption in the Centro Nazionale Anticrimine Informatico per la Protezione delle Infrastrutture Critiche (CNAIPIC) in its dealings with businesses and foreign governments.

The organisation is responsible for computer security and the national critical IT infrastructure in Italy.

"This corrupted organization gathered all the evidence from the seized property of suspected computer professional entertainers and utilized it over many years to conduct illegal operations with foreign intelligence agencies and oligarchy to facilitate their lust for power and money, they never used obtained evidence to really support ongoing investigations," the Anonymous statement reads.

"Today we reveal a whole load of stuff from such owned institutions, just to make it clear all of this stuff was stored on CNAIPIC evidence servers for years while people are doing time in jail waiting for the trial while CNAIPIC used the evidence in the global spy game galore."

The group published images from the archive, including what appears to be directory folder lists, basic network infrastructure plans and photography from inside one of the CNAIPIC offices.

Anonymous also claims to have found information relating to governments in Egypt, Australia, Russia, the Ukraine, Nepal and Belarus, along with tax havens in Gibraltar, Cyprus and Cayman Islands and oil companies like Exxon Mobil.

"Documents are hard to verify, as it's not like you can call to check, but it looks like Anonymous has been successful," Sophos security expert Chet Wisniewski told V3.

"Once again the group has proved how much easier it is to be the attacker than the defender. They showed that when the AnonPlus site got hacked."

Earlier this month Italian police arrested 15 people in a co-ordinated series of raids in Italy and Switzerland, including a reputed senior member of the Anonymous team.