The parliamentary aide to a right-wing Finnish MP has offered to resign after the Anonymous hacking collective published what it said was a list of applications to join a local neo-Nazi party.
Hacktivists broke into the website of Kansallinen Vastarinta, the magazine of the Suomen Vastarintaliike (Finnish Resistance Movement), before extracting and publishing what it said was the party's membership application database at the end of last month. The local cell of Anonymous warned of future internet-based attacks on its websites and forums unless Suomen Vastarintaliike (Finnish Resistance Movement) is disbanded.
Among the list that allegedly contained the names of hundreds of would-be members of the neo-Nazi group was Ulla Pyysalo, aide to Finnish MP Juho Eerola of the True Finns. Pyysalo told local media that she is offering to quit her job by the end of the year, providing she finds alternative work in the meantime, because she wants to avoid damaging the True Finns. Pyysalo maintains that she never actually joined Suomen Vastarintaliike, which espouses a confrontational anti-immigrant agenda and runs training camps in the Finnish countryside.
The Finnish wing of Anonymous has been busy of late. Days after the Kansallinen Vastarinta hack, local hacktivists claimed responsibility for temporarily publishing personal details (names, social security numbers, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses) of 16,000 Finns. Most of the details appear to have come from the databases of Finnish further education organisations and students alliances, though some of those listed are well into retirement, strongly suggesting other sources were involved. An investigation into the hack is underway.
Anonymous Finland claimed responsibility for the hack, which appears to be motivated into embarrassing firms and educational institutions into improving their security. It described the exercise as part of the wider OpAntiSec programme. As with previous leaks that have accompanied previous AntiSec operations, little consideration appears to have been given for the collateral damage that might arise to innocent parties by spilling their personal details all over the web. ®
