Activist hackers from the Anonymous collective are claiming they have again penetrated secure Thai government computers, this time leaking private information from Royal Thai Police servers in a continuing protest against plans for a single internet gateway, which the group maintains have not been scrapped.

The hack, which police have not confirmed, occurred on Nov 30, with Anonymous tweeting a statement and link to password-protected files containing private information on police officers and records of evidence in some cases.

The Bangkok Post has not been able to verify the data stored on the secure website.

The Hacked website reported that Anonymous left a note for Thai authorities along with the computer "dump file" containing the stolen data.

"To prove our point, we are demonstrating the inability of the Thai government to secure even their own police servers," the message read. "It is pitiful and should worry all of Thailand. Your police are protecting their files with passwords like 12345; it would be funny if it weren't so sad."

A number of police websites, including the Office of Police Strategy and Police Administration Information System, briefly were offline earlier this week, but Anonymous made no claim to having taken them down. All were online Friday afternoon.

Pol Maj Gen Supaseth Chokchai, the Technology Crime Suppression Division (TCSD) chief, denied that the national police's websites had been hacked. The issue had not even been raised in a meeting of police commanders nationwide on Friday, he added.

The TCSD would be the first police unit to be alerted had the website been intruded by hackers as it was the agency directly tasked to handle hackers and computer crimes, he said.

#OpSingleGateway

The latest salvo in the hackers' so-called #OpSingleGateway campaign was launched to protest and mobilise both the Thai public and international media against the government's single gateway, which the "hacktivists" believe will be used to censor the internet.

A screenshot posted to the Hacked website of a purported list of files and directories penetrated by the Anonymous hacker collective.

On Oct 15, Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak said the plan to consolidate Thailand's 10 Internet gateways into one central, government-controlled point had been halted.

But state-controlled CAT Telecom subsequently announced it nonetheless was putting the infrastructure in place, rebranding the project from "single gateway" to "national gateway".

On Oct 23, Anonymous said on Twitter that they gained access to CAT Telecom's systems and released customers' personal data. ICT Minister Uttama Savanayana denied the information had come from the state telecom enterprise.

"Please be confident that the government can keep citizens' information safely," he told reporters at the time. "All government services are not affected and will continue as usual."

The #OpSingleGateway campaign began Oct 1 when Anonymous, with the help of the F5CyberArmy online group launched a denial-of-service attack against a number of Thai-government websites, making them inaccessible for hours.

In its latest statement, the hackers group said it believes that, despite denials, the single-gateway project is still moving ahead in secret.

"Although there have been numerous clarifications, denials, and confusing statements about the prospects of a single internet gateway in Thailand, it is our understanding that these plans are still in motion, still receiving funding, and still very much part of the government agenda," Anonymous' latest statement read, reiterating an earlier threat:

"Any corporations or individuals helping to deploy this single gateway will be targeted by any electronic means.

"Your government wants you to trust their motives in collecting information on your online activities; they want you to trust that they will be able to secure this data and will only use it for lawful means," the hacktivists wrote, addressing the Thai public. "They cannot guarantee any of this.

"If a single gateway for access to the internet outside of Thailand is created, with the inevitable accompanying databases that will contain details of traffic passing through the gateway, it will get hacked."