New Charges Added to Hacktivist Indictment

MANHATTAN (CN) - A new federal indictment against five men charged with being the hackers behind cyber-attacks against major media companies, governments around the world and private intelligence firms adds a prominent defendant, and a previously overlooked attack.

A criminal complaintagainst Jeremy Hammond, who went by the handles "Anarchaos," "sup_g," "burn," "yohoho," "POW," "tylerknowsthis" and "crediblethreat," was made public in March.

He was re-indicted on Wednesday, with a new charge of hack attacks against the Arizona Department of Public Safety and the private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor.

The Stratfor hack produced more than 5 million emails, subsequently distributed by Wikileaks under the name "Global Intelligence Files."

They exposed details of federal surveillance of Occupy Wall Street, the possible existence of a sealed indictment of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, and global media partnerships with private spies.

According to the new, 6-count indictment against Hammond and four other, the hacking created a windfall of media attention and credit-card spending sprees for the hackers.

Sifting through the private information of 860,000 Stratfor clients, hackers spent at least $700,000 using their credit cards, the indictment states.

This led to a new charge of aggregated identity theft.

Hammond's criminal complaint also details his involvement in traditional activism, detailing his history of protesting oil companies, political figures, the Chicago Olympics and, in one instance, a Holocaust denier.

"Hammond himself stated in an interview with the FBI that he intended to use hacking to fight for social justice," the original complaint stated.

This information did not appear in his new indictment.

But there are additional details about his hack into the Arizona Department of Public Safety.

Also named as defendants in the new indictment are Ryan Ackroyd, Jake Davis, Darren Martyn, and Donncha O'Cearrbhail.

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