Anonymous claims release of hacked Justice Department data

The online collective Anonymous claimed Wednesday to have released nearly two gigabytes of files it hacked from US Department of Justice servers.

"Today we are releaseing [sic] 1.7GB of data that used to belong to the United States Bureau of Justice, until now," Anonymous said in a press release accompanying a link to the documents on the filing-sharing website The Pirate Bay.

"Within the booty you may find lots of shiny things such as internal emails, and the entire database dump."

A Justice Department spokesman confirmed to FOX News Channel that a server operated by the Bureau of Justice Statistics had experienced unauthorized access.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics collects and analyzes crime data.

The spokesman noted that the Bureau of Justice Statistics website remained operational Wednesday and said the department's primary website, justice.gov, was unaffected.

"The department is continuing protection and defensive measures to safeguard information and will refer any activity that is determined to be criminal in nature to law enforcement for investigation," the spokesman said.

(Published by NY Post - May 23, 2012)