Private Data on Planned Parenthood Employees Leaked Online

Activists, perhaps in protest, or perhaps out of boredom, pulled personal information from the organization's website and published it to the Web.

3301, a hacktivist group taking credit for the stunt, says shoddy coding on Planned Parenthood's site made the hack possible.

The group, in an online post, said it used a so-called Blind SQL, an attack that exploits unseen error messages returned from a website database. It is “blind” because the attacker does not need to see the error messages to carry out the attack.

Planned Parenthood Chief Information Officer Tom Subak told the Daily Dot on Sunday night that the organization had no indication a hack had taken place. But, on Monday afternoon, Planned Parenthood acknowledged a cyber incident had occurred and was under investigation.

Motherboard reports: "The group published the databases that support Planned Parenthood's website, an employee list, as well as their email addresses and encrypted passwords. Beyond the encrypted passwords, it appears as though nothing that was published is particularly sensitive data."

The breach follows controversy over the release of undercover, edited videos recorded by an antiabortion group that claims Planned Parenthood illegally profits off the sale of fetal parts for medical research.

One of the hackers, who goes by the pseudonym “E,” told the Daily Dot: “Obviously what [Planned Parenthood] does is a very ominous practice. It'll be interesting to see what surfaces when [Planned Parenthood] is stripped naked and exposed to the public.”

The group's online post states:

“We've noticed quite a lot of attention has been diverted to a supposedly malicious organization known as Planned Parenthood. The actions of this 'federation' are not seen as right in the eyes of the public. So here we are, the social justice warriors, seeking to reclaim some sort of lulz for the years and thousands of dollars that Planned Parenthood have wasted and made harvesting your babies.”

The use of the turn of phrase "social justice warrior," a term used in other hacktivist campaigns, suggests the hackers are trying to appeal to anti-progressives, according to Motherboard.

"While hackers have been politically motivated since time immemorial, it's notable that a liberal nongovernment organization such as Planned Parenthood was the target of a hack," Motherboard reports.

In the last few years, activist groups from across the conservative spectrum have started their own protests and are now taking them online.

"This is kind of like, the people that protested against the Confederate flag versus the people who protested for the Confederate flag," New America Foundation researcher Peter Singer told Motherboard. "Hacking is a more common tactic now and the toolkit for it is more commonly available. This is an atypically aligned hack, but the reality of it is this is going to become a lot more common."