Anonymous Hackers Replace Police Supplier Website With ‘Tribute to Jeremy Hammond’

Anonymous hacktivists announced via Twitter that they had successfully hacked the website of New York Iron Works, a police-equipment supplier, and replaced the homepage with a tribute of love to arrested hacker and Chicagoan Jeremy Hammond. Anonymous also claimed responsibility for several other hacks on March 8, including knocking Peruvian government website http://policiainformatica.gob.pe/ offline, and posting the personal information of FBI agents in a public online message board in what they called Operation Piggy Bank.

New York Iron Works was founded in 1995 and sells police equipment and gear, as well as tactical clothing and accessories including flashlights and weapon lights. Its website is currently offline and not displaying anything, but the homepage was used this morning by Anonymous to display their own message as well as a YouTube video showing the final minutes of cult-film Fight Club, in which a group of American terrorists led by a schizophrenic protagonist played by Edward Norton/Brad Pitt blow up the headquarters of several banks. Anonymous also posted what appeared to be hundreds of usernames and passwords, suggesting that the hackers had not only taken control of the homepage, but accessed the website's servers.

The cyber hacks were part of a weekly operation which Anonymous has named F-ck FBI Friday, refferred to on Twitter as #FFF. The formless international collective of computer programmers, geeks and social hacktivists, announced the successful attacks through several centralized Twitter accounts on Fri. morning.

#FFF newyorkironworks.com POLICE SUPPLIER OWNED BY #ANTISEC #Anonymous #OWS #FreeHammond #ROOTED #MAYHEM, wrote @AnonymousIRC in a Twitter message.

A second post from the same account drew on the image of online hackers as pirates: http://www.newyorkironworks.com/ | #AntiSec is dead. Yar, right. Hail to all mateys, around the world. We're having F-CK FBI FRIDAY #FFF.

The Anonymous hacks were also confirmed by @YourAnonNews, who tweeted, Can't Stop. Won't Stop. Welcome back to #FFF | DEFACED - http://newyorkironworks.com - A police supplier pwnt by #Anonymous | #FREEHAMMOND.

The message, titled TRIBUTE TO JEREMY HAMMOND, WHEN FALSE HEROES FALL, TRUE ONES RISE, begins by offering shout-outs of love to all arrested hackers and Anonymous members as well as those fighting from their own freedom around the world. Anonymous refers to themselves as the knights of the Lulz, and refers to former-Anonymous leader and FBI informant Sabu as a lame-facebook-user-gangsta-wannabe assh-le blogger.

Jeremy Hammond is charged with hacking Stratfor's servers and stealing the credit card data of 60,000 Stratfor subscribers and account information on around 860,000. If convicted in court he would face up to 20 years in prison.

The Twitter hashtag #FFF, which Anonymous uses on a weekly basis and stands for F-ck FBI Friday spiked in usage on Twitter again, surpassing last week's numbers according to Twitter analysis website Statweestics. However, the hashtag may be coming from a number of sources with different interpretations of its meaning. One Twitter user defined it as feminist follow fri[day] while others similarly played off of the #ff hashtag, which stands for Follow Friday and is used to suggest which users to follow. According to the website, usage was up 800 percent on Friday.