Anonymous attacks Justice Dept., nabbing 1.7GB of data

In a hack it dubbed "Monday Mail Mayhem," Anonymous claims to have collected and released 1.7GB of data from the U.S. Department of Justice yesterday.

"Within the booty you may find lots of shiny things such as internal emails, and the entire database dump," the hacker group wrote on the AnonNews Web site. "We Lulzed as they took the website down after being owned, clearly showing they were scared of what inevitably happened."

The group did not specifically say why it initiated the attack. Instead, it cryptically announced that, "We are releasing data to spread information, to allow the people to be heard and to know the corruption in their government. We are releasing it to end the corruption that exists, and truly make those who are being oppressed free."

The message was accompanied by a downloadable torrent hosted by The Pirate Bay that apparently had all the 1.7GB of data.

The Department of Justice didn't appear to be extremely concerned by the hack, according to ZDNet.

"The department is looking into the unauthorized access of a website server operated by the Bureau of Justice Statistics that contained data from their public website," a Department of Justice spokesperson told ZDNet. "The Bureau of Justice Statistics Web site has remained operational throughout this time. The department's main website, justice.gov, was not affected."

This isn't the first time the Department of Justice has fallen victim to an Anonymous attack. In January, Anti-SOPA activists with Anonymous attempted to shut down the government and entertainment industry by launching denial-of-service attacks on the Department of Justice, the FBI, Universal Music, and the Motion Picture Association of America. On Sunday, a branch of Anonymous named AntiS3curityOPS also claimed responsibility for taking down Chicago's police Web site.