Congress Opens Investigation Into HBGary Scandal

Mar. 17 2011 - 7:38 pm | 0 views | 0 recommendations | 0 comments

The U.S. Congress is stepping into the continuing HBGary scandal after global hacktivist group Anonymous exposedproposals by the government-contracted software security firm to damage WikiLeaks and other organizations.

The House Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on Wednesday asked the Defence Department and National Security Agency (NSA) to hand over all contracts they had signed with HBGary Federal, Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies, Wired reports.

It comes after about a dozen members of Congress sent a letter to several subcommittees calling for an investigation into HBGary’s proposals, in league with other companies, to law firm Hunton & Williams to probe and discredit WikiLeaks with a “dirty tricks campaign that included possible illegal actions against citizens engaged in free speech.”

Last month a small team of Anonymous supporters hacked into HBGary’s servers, then stole and published 71,800 emails from the security firm on the Internet. In the fallout, the e-mails revealed that HBGary, had proposed together with Palantir and Berico, cyber attacks against WikiLeaks, a misinformation campaign against the group and intimidation tactics against Salon reporter Glenn Greenwald who has supported WikiLeaks.

The letter said that the HBGary emails also revealed that the security contractors along with Hunton & Williams had also “planned a campaign to sabotage and discredit critics of the U.S. Chamber of COmmerce,”  as well as the trade union federation Change to Win, the Center for American Progress and other organizations.

The e-mails showed that one of the contractors’ proposals was to mine social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter for information on Chamber critics, then plant false documentation using “fake insider personas” to discredit the group. They also discussed using malicious software (or malware) to steal private information.

Following press reports into these proposals, Palantir and Berico publicly distanced themselves from HBGary, while HBGary Federal’s CEO Aaron Barr, who was a central character in last month’s hacking incident,resigned.

Via Wired, here’s a video of the Congressional subcommittee hearing in which Rep. Hang Johnson questions NSA director Keith Alexander and James Miller, deputy under secretary of defence for policy, on the nature of the HBGary contracts.