This Christmas will not be a happy one for George Friedman (who incidentally was the focus of John Mauldin's latest book promotion email blast) and his Stratfor Global Intelligence service, because as of a few hours ago, hacking collective Anonymous disclosed that not only has it hacked the Stratfor website (since confirmed by Friedman himself), but has also obtained the full client list of over 4000 individuals and corporations, including their credit cards (which supposedly have been used to make $1 million in "donations"), as well as over 200 GB of email correspondence. And since the leaked client list is the who is who of intelligence, and capital management, including such names as Goldman Sachs, the Rockefeller Foundation and, yep, MF Global, we are certain that not only Stratfor and its clients will be waiting with bated breath to see just what additional troves of information are unleashed, but virtually everyone else, in this very sensitive time from a geopolitical point of view. And incidentally, we can't help but notice that Anonymous may have finally ventured into the foreign relations arena. We can only assume, for now, that this is not a formal (or informal) statement of allegiance with any specific ideology as otherwise the wargames in the Straits of Hormuz may soon be very inappropriately named (or halfway so).

Chronology of releases from AnonymousIRC starting early this afternoon:

just told us: "Currently rm -rf'n targets and shredding logs"

We just hear that battle-sleigh plundered 200gb of emails and other booty before he started to deliver his presents.

From IRC: "** Are you all ready to witness the rm -rf /* of a major intelligence corporation, live on IRC and twitter?"

5 minutes and counting. won't disappoint you. Get on IRC now for the whole spirit of .

FUCK IT, HE'LL DO IT LIVE! FUCKING THING SUCKS, HE'LL DO IT LIVE! | http://mibbit.com/?channel=%23anonops&server=irc.anonops.li |

A wild rm -rf /* appears: http://www.stratfor.com/ | from | plundered 200gb of their mails and more booty.

takedown mirrored forever: zone-h.org/mirror/id/1641…

"You do realize how preposterous it is to suggest that simply shutdown completely for 2 days, right?" ~ Frank Ginac (IT manager)

Merry to everyone http://imagebin.org/190224 Stratfor rooted. All your base are belong to us. <3

http://bit.ly/ulWECe | /#AntiSec Attack |

And the kicker:

The private (and secret) client list of : http://pastebin.com/8MtFze0s | Not so private and secret anymore.

Anon promises that much more is coming:

has enough targets lined up to extend the fun fun fun of throught the entire next week.

How the Stratfor site looked minutes after the hack:

Full letter from George Friemdan to clients as of an hour ago:

The full client list as released in a pastebin by Anonymous of all the alleged clients sorted by company name, can be found here. As this is merely an extracted column from a far larger database, we are confident much more very sensitive information, as the bulk of the companies are either in the intelligence or money management business, will be released shortly.