The Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed Friday that cybercriminals had hacked into a conference call between agents and British law enforcement officials discussing cybercrime investigations.
Hactivist collective Anonymous claimed responsibility for recording the meeting and posting it Friday on the Web. The FBI confirmed to news media that the call had been hacked and said it was under investigation.
The 16-minute conversation appears to be between the FBI and law enforcement in London. Almost half is joking and small talk, with the remainder focused on investigations of suspects believed to be Anonymous members or sympathizers.
In one case, the agents discussed a 15-year-old arrested just before Christmas. The teen, who went by the moniker TehwongZ, was a suspect in the reported breach of Steam, a U.S.-based gaming Web site.
U.S. agents in Baltimore were interested in the suspect, who British law enforcement described as "a bit of an idiot" and a minor who may be trying to get attention. "He's just a pain in the bum," a British official said.
The conference call also mentioned other investigations and the exceptional work of U.S. forensic investigators who cracked the hard drive of a suspect and produced a 325-page document on what was found.
Anonymous took credit for the hack on Twitter and said, "Did anyone tell the FBI that we're not Pokemon? You really cannot catch us all."
The incident was an embarrassment for law enforcement and left some security experts wondering why such conversations were not encrypted.
