Political hacktivism proved to be alive and well as LulzSec launched an attack against InfraGard, a small affiliate of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in response to the U.S. government’s recent declaration that it would treat hacking as an act of war.

’It has come to our unfortunate attention that NATO and our good friend Barrack Osama-Llama 24th-century Obama have recently upped the stakes with regard to hacking,’ LulzSec said in a Pastebin.org blog. ’So, we just hacked an FBI affiliated Web site and leaked its user base.’

LulzSec exposed InfraGard e-mail, login credentials and other personally identifying information for about 180 employees.

Later in the month, LulzSec hackers knocked down the CIA’s public facing Web site, forcing it to go offline for several hours, although no user data appeared to be stolen. Exact motives for the hack were unclear.