Legion now hacks accountants' data

The hacking group say they will release information on those who help mask the rich.
Alnoor Peermohamed/Business Standard reports.

Online vigilance group Legion has claimed they have hacked into data of accountants who help the rich hide their wealth.

Legion said it would study what they had gathered and filter the information before releasing it online.

This is the latest exploit of the group that has previously targeted journalists, businessmen, and political leaders.

The group claims they are Indian-origin hackers who hate Islamic State after a team member switched sides to become a top recruiter for the terror group and lost his life in a drone strike.

"We need a couple of days since data has to be processed. We are trying to filter out as many innocents as possible," an anonymous member said on an encrypted chat after Business Standard reached out to the group on e-mail.

Legion said it was writing software to sift through data and retrieve information only of illegal wealth.

"Data, lots of it. And we expect them (people in India) to be patient -- as we already said if we release raw data -- it's bound to create chaos."

Since last week, Legion has stolen e-mail dumps from the Congress, hacked into their Twitter accounts, of NDTV and its journalists Barkha Dutt and Ravish Kumar.

It also claimed it possessed e-mails after it hacked into sansad.nic.in, the e-mail service for parliamentarians hosted by the government's technology arm, the National Informatics Centre.

The outrage evoked after its initial set of leaks also seem to have set a change in heart for the hackers, who now claim they would rather focus on sharing data that could potentially be useful than create chaos.

"At first it was for the lulz (fun). Then we saw people reacting to it and decided: Hey, why not actually make something out of it?" said the hacker.

"This is also probably motivated by the fact that none of us expects to live very long and healthy lives with the amount of drugs in our system. Might as well go out with a bang."

The vigilante group claimed the government, which knows the vulnerabilities in the banking system, was selling out to corporations with its push towards digital payments.

"It doesn't make any sense. Why should people be forced to use services such as Paytm?" the Legion spokesperson said.

They also took a dig at other hackers -- criminals and their ethical comrades. Skilled people were working for large organisations rather than making an impact, said the group.

Image used only for representational purposes. Photograph: Patrick Lux/Getty Images