Doing whatever it takes to bring some perceived justice back in the world…

Looks like the hacking group ‘Anonymous‘ has been back at it with its latest disclosure that it has stolen thousands of credit card numbers belonging to clients of US based security think tank Stratfor with as much a million dollars to date being donated to charity.

At present Anonymous is boasting that it has stolen Stratfor’s confidential client list, which includes outlets like Apple, the US Air Force and mined it for more than 4000 credit card numbers, passwords and home addresses.

To date ‘Anonymous’ has posted a small slice of the 200 gigabytes worth of sensitive client information, going so far as to go on twitter to taunt that more outlets have been earmarked in days to come.

According to ‘Anonymous’ it was able to attain access to client credit card information because Stratfor failed to encrypt the codes, an embarrassing snafu for an outlet that’s in the business of security.

Hours after publishing what it claimed was Stratfor’s client list, Anonymous tweeted a link to encrypted files online with names, phone numbers, emails, addresses and credit card account details.

‘Not as many as you expected? Worry not, fellow pirates and robin hoods. These are just the ‘A’s,’ read a message posted online that encouraged readers to download a file of the hacked information.

What is particularly distressing to clients at present is the extent of information that ‘Anonymous’ has been able to steal and what some of the notes on various emails may have to say. Something that could prove to be very embarrassing as well as incriminatory given the sensitive information that an outlet like the US Airforce would be privy to.

This evening ‘Anonymous’ went online with images of receipts of charitable donations it already has begun to administer.

Hours after publishing what it claimed was Stratfor’s client list, Anonymous tweeted a link to encrypted files online with names, phone numbers, emails, addresses and credit card account details.

‘Not as many as you expected? Worry not, fellow pirates and robin hoods. These are just the ‘A’s,’ read a message posted online that encouraged readers to download a file of the hacked information.

One member of ‘anonymous’ went so far as to go on twitter using the handlebar, AnonymousAbu alleging that more than 90,000 credit cards from law enforcement, the intelligence community and journalists — ‘corporate/exec accounts of people like Fox’ News — had been hacked and used to make more than one million dollars worth of Christimas donations to entities that include for instance the Red Cross, CARE, Save the Children.Wishing everyone a “Merry LulzXMas” – a nod to its spin-off hacking group Lulz Security – Anonymous also posted a link on Twitter to a site containing the email, phone number and credit number of a US Homeland Security employee.

Apart from customers being able to dispute what they may think to be errant charges on their cards, it seems the real fracture might be the sensitive information that ‘Anonymous’ may have come up with as it continues its guerilla warfare against the establishment and its fight for disclosure of what they perceive to be a corrupt and illegitimate system. All part of the greater action one might think to keep a check on what many perhaps would privately agree is the excess of the system that needs to be occasionally be brought into check, even in ways that ‘Anonymous’ seeks to put a stop to in the first place.

telegraph