Hackers retaliate against San Francisco transit

Hackers broke into the Web site of the Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Officers Association on Wednesday and stole the personal information of officers who patrol the San Francisco’s subway system. The hackers posted the names, home addresses and email addresses of about 100 officers on another Web site, along with passwords for the BART officers’ site, Wired reports.

The cyber-attack was apparently in retaliation for BART officials turning off underground cellular and wi-fi service on Aug. 11 to curb a planned protest against the shooting of an unarmed man by BART officers in July.

(More from GlobalPost: San Francisco officials foil protest by turning off cellular signal)

The Web site breach was the second such hit in four days. On Sunday, a group called Anonymous broke into another site associated with the transit system, myBART.org, and reposted the personal information of more than 2,000 subway-riders.

Anonymous claimed it was not responsible for Wednesday’s hacking incident, Wired reports. “The leak today of BART officer data could be the work sanctioned by those who truly support Anonymous, or agent provocateurs. Stay skeptical,” the group tweeted.

“These people are criminals, and we're going to forward this information to the FBI,” BART’s union president Jesse Sekhon told the San Francisco Chronicle. “These people need to be brought to justice. They can't be terrorizing people."

After last week’s protest was foiled by the transit officials, Anonymous scheduled a protest for Aug. 15. As the protesters marched on four downtown San Francisco BART stations during rush hour, cell phone service remained intact, but officials closed the stations to prevent the group from going underground. Anonymous said today that the group is planning to protest again next Monday at 5 p.m. at the Civic Center Station.