Anonymous Publishes Bankers' Contact Information, Credentials

Anonymous is taking its campaign to change the nation's laws governing computer crime to the financial industry.

The hacker collective on Sunday published a spreadsheet that appears to list logins, passwords and contact information for what appears to be hundreds of bankers.

"Now we have your attention America: Anonymous's Superbowl Commercial 4k banker d0x via the FED," the group tweeted.

Federal Reserve spokeswoman Lisa Oliva says the information, which was posted Monday on Reddit, a social news website, "was obtained by exploiting a temporary vulnerability in a website vendor product" that "was fixed shortly after discovery and is no longer an issue."

"This incident did not affect critical operations of the Federal Reserve System," Oliva added.

The document dump continues a campaign, which Anonymous has dubbed "Operation Last Resort," that aims to avenge the death of Aaron Swartz, a programmer and advocate for making information widely available via the Internet.

Swartz' recent suicide touched off a wave of criticism of federal prosecutors, who had charged the 26-year-old with breaking into a digital library at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and downloading millions of articles that are available only to subscribers of JSTOR.

At the time of his death, Swartz faced up to 35 years in prison and roughly $1 million in fines as result of his alleged crimes. "He faced a harsher punishment than murderers, robbers, child pornographers, or even terrorist sympathizers, all for doing nothing more than downloading academic articles," Anonymous said in a message posted Jan. 25 on YouTube.

Though Swartz' family called his death "the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach," the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, which brought the charges against Swartz, defended his office's conduct.

"As federal prosecutors, our mission includes protecting the use of computers and the Internet by enforcing the law as fairly and responsibly as possible," U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said in a Jan. 16 statement. "At no time did this office ever seek - or ever tell Mr. Swartz's attorneys that it intended to seek - maximum penalties under the law."

Swartz' death spurred threats from Anonymous to attack U.S. government websites and release confidential information as part of a push for changes in laws the group contends advance government control of information at the expense of individual liberty. As part of its effort, Anonymous recently claimed credit for a cyberattack that brought down the website of the U.S. Sentencing Commission.