

Anonymous allegedly hacked Romney tax records - choko
http://nashvillecitypaper.com/content/city-news/anonymous-group-allegedly-hacked-romney-tax-records-franklin-firm

======
deweller
The hacker activist group named Anonymous is not involved in this claim.

But rather the statement comes from an anonymous group claiming to have stolen
digital copies of the records.

------
ender7
I don't understand why they made this a public posting. Romney isn't
incentivized to pay up once the blackmail is public knowledge -- payment is
equivalent to admitting guilt. Might as well keep your money and take the
hits.

I don't see any situations where this beats contacting the campaign privately,
with a document or two in hand to prove that you have the real stuff.

Unless, of course, if this is just a stunt that someone is running on the off
chance that anyone is stupid enough to actually pay the money.

~~~
sp332
This isn't about getting Romney to pay, it's about getting some suckers to
send a little money to the addresses on their own. Here's the balance for the
"stop release" account
[https://blockchain.info/address/1HeF89wMjC48bWNgWvVo7Wu3RaLW...](https://blockchain.info/address/1HeF89wMjC48bWNgWvVo7Wu3RaLW8XVsE8)
and the "promote release" account
[https://blockchain.info/address/12AP6iCwRNFQqKLStH3A4b4hw3SL...](https://blockchain.info/address/12AP6iCwRNFQqKLStH3A4b4hw3SL6RaNgB)

~~~
axusgrad
Someone was sending "binary" (10101) amounts of bitcoins to the address, to
spell out an imgur link as a joke.

~~~
sp332
What's the link?

~~~
macchina
This is what I got:

imgur.com/5k37g

~~~
sp332
...I don't get it. I mean it's funny that someone is using the BTC chain for
communications :) But does that image mean anything?

~~~
MartinCron
Maybe there's a message encoded in the image as some sort of double-
steganography.

------
hugh4life
What I find interesting is the future(or current) possibility of political
opponents hacking each other and then blaming it on "Anonymous" or
entrepreneurial hackers. Or heck, infiltrate companies that do business with
the political opponent and then blame "hackers" who don't exist.

~~~
mey
So Watergate?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal>

------
brokentone
Some of us developers have been working on the rehabilitation of the term
"hack" and "hacker" (Hacker News anyone). The various Anonymous/LulzSec
attacks of the last few years have been amusing and most have not been
directly attacked individuals or been extortive (however, they've still been
illegal, and I have not agreed with them).

Although a politician, Mitt Romney is still a person. No one has rights to his
personal information he has not decided to share.

This attack is despicable.

~~~
jj00nathan
"No one has rights to his personal information he has not decided to share.
This attack is despicable."

You realize Mitt Romney is campaigning for the office that is the single worst
violator of that philosophy in the world, right? Don't get me wrong, I
generally think law enforcement _should_ have privileged access to private
data, but you disrespect your philosophical position by pretending to apply it
in a manner where the outcome is predetermined through uneven application.

~~~
MartinCron
_the office that is the single worst violator of that philosophy in the world,
right?_

The president of the United States takes an oath to defend the constitution.
Sure, some do it better than others, but I can think of a dozen worse
violators of getting personal information that people have decided not to
share.

------
corry
The ransom note has pretty specific language:

"Romney's 1040 tax returns were taken from the PWC office 8/25/2012 by gaining
access to the third floor via a gentleman working on the 3rd floor of the
building. Once on the 3rd floor, the team moved down the stairs to the 2nd
floor and setup shop in an empty office room. During the night, suite 260 was
entered, and all available 1040 tax forms for Romney were copied."

Anyone at PwC will instantly know if this is true or not. My guess is that the
specifics will check out (why else include them?) and give credibility to the
claim.

But even if those specifics are true, how will anyone know that they _really_
have the returns? Maybe they just figured out where the returns were stored
and are trying to force someone else's hand.

~~~
jasontn
By taking a line item deduction and making it public to the penny. Unequivocal
confirmation.

~~~
corry
Good point, that would be the 'proof of life' in this case (at least for
Romney and PwC).

------
oldgregg
Damn. Who knows if this is legit, but assassination markets are coming, it's
only a matter of time. Obviously it won't start with ACTUAL assassinations--
but hide your data, hide your mistresses.

If abused assistants and underpaid file clerks ever realize they can make 100x
their salary by leaking data with a bounty there is going to be a culture
changing shit-storm.

~~~
Bud
Not really. The file clerks and assistants in question would have to do far
more than simply "realize" that they can leak data.

They would have to magically acquire the expertise to leak it untraceably, to
handle all the financial arrangements untraceably, and not get caught in any
other ways. Meanwhile, the most powerful people in the world will be going
after them.

This is already an extremely difficult proposition, and will only get more
difficult with time.

------
adastra
There is an important piece to this story that is missing from all the current
news articles: a different earlier post on pastebin, dated 9/2, did _not_ make
mention of any kind of ransom:

<http://pastebin.com/zdU1TK40>

That earlier post simply said "The group will release all available files to
the public on the 28 of September, 2012."

That says to me that a second group saw the original post and decided to try
and make some money off it as a scam. Of course it's also possible that they
just changed their minds over the weekend.

I'm not sure what either scenario says about the likelihood that this is real,
but it definitely makes things more interesting. It's also worth noting that
PWC is currently saying they have seen no signs that any data was taken.

------
waterlesscloud
What if it's all a scheme to drive up the value of bitcoin via speculation?

Increased attention to the currency will have some bidding up the price, so
anyone just holding bitcoin could profit, even if without 1 coin being sent to
either address.

Of course, if someone did try to make the payment and purchase a million bucks
of bitcoins, that would drive the price sky high.

~~~
brucehart
My first thought is that it would do the opposite: increase political pressure
on Bitcoin so that it may become more difficult to use (legally). This would
drive down the price since many buyers are speculating on Bitcoin becoming
more mainstream one day.

------
splatzone
They've provided no real proof that they actually have the tax returns. I'd be
surprised if this is genuine.

~~~
debacle
If it is genuine, then the Romney campaign has proof.

~~~
readme
If it is genuine, I don't know why they think they'll get away with it.

Also $1M is way too low of an amount to blackmail Romney for. Talk about
selling yourself short.

~~~
scarmig
Eh, I'm not sure. It's pretty clear what's in Romney's returns at this point
(a lower than average income tax rate, though it's hard to say whether it's
closer to 5% or 15%), so I don't see a huge downside risk for him in them
being released. If they upped their demands to, say $10 million, we're talking
about real money, even for Mitt. Enough to get an extra percent of the vote or
so in a moderate sized state. Unless there's something genuinely illegal in
the returns, a couple days of renewed interest in them might be preferable to
giving up a bit of money at the margin (though, paid media is fairly well
saturated now, so it might not be that useful).

From Romney's point of view, too, there'd be no guarantee that paying 10
million would prevent them from being released. There's no accountability for
the Anonymous. With 1 million, though, it's just a no brainer.

That said, I doubt they have anything. Reeks of BS to me.

~~~
twoodfin
A quick point and a theory:

First, it's not true that the average American pays 15% in income taxes. An
typical family in the middle of the income spectrum pays about 5.6%.[1]

As far as Romney's returns go, I have a hunch that the political problems
wouldn't be in the numbers, but in something like his charitable giving, of
which there's an awful lot. What if one of the church programs he gave to
turns out to have had some politically incorrect pamphlets, for example?
Suddenly he'd be in a position to have to defend everyone he'd ever given $1
(or more likely, $10,000).

[1]
[http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3151](http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3151)

~~~
scarmig
I misspoke: it's not that Romney pays a lower average income tax rate, but
pays a lower average federal tax rate, including payroll. For most people,
income taxes make up a negligible part of that total tax burden.

I doubt the charitable giving would be a problem, and I'm also skeptical of
the "Romney took a tax amnesty in 2009" theory. At this point I think it's
mostly bull-headedness: Romney thinks no one has a right to see his private
financial information, and he's sticking by that, come hell or high water.

~~~
twoodfin
_For most people, income taxes make up a negligible part of that total tax
burden._

Ignoring the employer "contribution" sleight-of-hand, payroll taxes in 2012
are 4.2% SS + 1.45% Medicare, or 5.65%. Adding in the income tax burden, and
you're still looking at a total Federal tax burden of under 12%.

~~~
debacle
You're missing the point. If you spend most of what you earn, that's an
additiona 10% (in my state) on sales tax.

Most very wealthy don't spend nearly what they earn, so the effect of sales
tax is negligible.

~~~
twoodfin
How am I missing the point? First the claim was that Mitt Romney pays a "lower
than average income tax rate", which is demonstrably untrue.

Then the claim was that he pays a "lower than average Federal tax burden" and
that the income tax as a burden on the average American was "negligible"
relative to their payroll tax burden. I didn't even bring up the fact that
Bain pays corporate income taxes on its profits before they're disbursed to
owners like Romney. Even discounting that, the average person's Federal tax
burden is _still_ lower than Romney's, assuming he's being truthful when he
says his income rate was never lower than 13%. And the average American's
income tax burden is not "negligible" relative to the payroll tax burden: it's
about 50/50.

Now you're trying to bring state taxes into it. Guess what: Romney makes most
of his money off of capital gains and is a Massachusetts resident, where long
term capital gains are taxed at 5.3%.

Yes, Romney could "afford" a much greater tax burden. He could "afford" a tax
burden of 95% and still live comfortably. That's not an argument (or at least
a good one) for such a thing. It's also not the point under debate (that
somehow the rate of taxes he pays is lower than the average American's).

~~~
scarmig
You're speaking inaccurately. People in the middle 20% paid an effective rate
of 15.5 percent. And trying to add in corporate tax rates is a bit-too-clever
slight of hand.

------
engtech
title didn't convey the content of the article, or why it would be of interest
to HN. I thought it was political stuff at first vs tech news.

A better title might be:

Anonymous' steals Romney's tax return for blackmail extortion

~~~
tstegart
Actually, I think the thieves are anonymous in that they aren't known yet, not
"Anonymous" the hacker group.

~~~
nollidge
If that's the case then "anonymous" shouldn't be used as a noun.

------
mherdeg
This kind of stuff has the potential to be so much fun, but always ends up
being so boring.

Remember when a 4chan user hacked into Sarah Palin's not-public-record Yahoo!
Mail account and managed to post screenshots to /b/? But then the user totally
failed to publicly archive the mail? And somehow _got caught_? Total
disappointment.

------
semenko
Pastebin: <http://pastebin.com/1j1yzQ9S>

I'm not very familiar with the Bitcoin protocol: Can all users view the values
of these two bitcoin accounts -- or BTC in transit?

~~~
andreyf
Yes, the transactions to and from these accounts are available here:

Stop release:
[https://blockchain.info/address/1HeF89wMjC48bWNgWvVo7Wu3RaLW...](https://blockchain.info/address/1HeF89wMjC48bWNgWvVo7Wu3RaLW8XVsE8)

Full release:
[https://blockchain.info/address/12AP6iCwRNFQqKLStH3A4b4hw3SL...](https://blockchain.info/address/12AP6iCwRNFQqKLStH3A4b4hw3SL6RaNgB)

~~~
waterlesscloud
Those amounts that look like 8 bits of binary are interesting, but don't seem
to convert to meaningful ascii.

That would have been fun.

~~~
grenouille
It actually is ASCII data (byte == binary_btc_amount * 256), spelling the
string '<http://i.imgur.com/5k6Rf.png>.

This PNG image is a QR code, which decodes to the string
'01101000011101000111010001110000001110100010111100101111011010010010111001101001
01101101011001110111010101110010001011100110001101101111011011010010111101101001'
(newline added for layout, not actually present).

This, in turn, is a binary ASCII encoding of the string
'<http://i.imgur.com/i>. But that's a 404 page, so this whole thing seems a
bit futile.

FWIW, the PNG file coincides exactly with the one generated by
<http://qrcode.kaywa.com/> for the binary string.

~~~
grenouille
And the second Bitcoin account contains the ASCII string 'prove it', in
forward chronological order. The imgur string was in backward order.

~~~
adastra
In the case of the "allow release" bitcoin account, clearly someone is sending
a message to the perpetuators saying "prove that you actually have the
documents".

In the case of the "stop release", a different person likely sent a message as
a joke, but didn't realize that the QR code couldn't handle the number of bits
for the full imgur url, and it was truncated as a result to the "/i".

~~~
grenouille
You're absolutely right about the truncation, the text is exactly 160
characters long, and the QR code generator used silently truncates the
clipboard contents, so that it's very likely that the person was unaware that
some characters were missing.

Any volunteers for sending a Bitcoin message to tell these guys that they
messed up? :-)

------
salimmadjd
KARL ROVE ALERT! This is a very similar in spirit to past tactics alleged
against Karl Rove. This enables Romney to dodge the Tax issue by having it
release this way and have all the focus pointed toward an "anonymous" group.
Don't fall for this!

~~~
salimmadjd
I wonder why this one was down voted? Think about the timing, releasing this
during DNC.

Think about the nature of the alleged hack, so unprecedented. Think about the
random process, this has never happened before.

All these combined and hearing alleged doggy practice of Karl rove in the past
can leade you to conclude the shady motivations behind this

------
tantalor
Is it safe to accept a ransom via BitCoin? Theoretically how might they be
caught?

~~~
rms
If the people accepting the Bitcoins for ransom own the Silk Road? Let's face
it, all Bitcoins eventually end up on the Silk Road.

------
deweller
PricewaterhouseCoopers PR managing director Chris Atkins says: “We are aware
of the allegations that have been made regarding improper access to our
systems. We are working closely with the United States Secret Service, and at
this time there is no evidence that our systems have been compromised or that
there was any unauthorized access to the data in question.”

See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4481292>

------
tlrobinson
It seems likely this is just a scam to get random Romney and Obama supports to
send Bitcoins to the scammer.

------
appliance_guide
Now if only they could steal Obama's college transcripts he's paid over a
million dollars to keep sealed...

~~~
rayiner
Equally relevant!

~~~
grandalf
Point taken, but I'd be happy if candidates just released both sorts of
information and weren't so afraid of being transparent.

~~~
myko
Is it normal to release educational transcripts? I thought taxes were pretty
much a given, but not so with college transcripts.

Also the OPs assertion of paying 1 million dollars to hide Obama's transcripts
is so ridiculous on its face I'm surprised people willingly post things like
that online.

~~~
Jach
Fun fact, we have Romney's 2010 and 2011 tax returns. McCain only provided two
years of returns too when he was running. It's not a hard-precedent to provide
"everything you have", either tax records or birth certificates or transcripts
or letters of recommendation... But looking at it from a politician's
perspective: if it can only help you, fine, release it. Otherwise why bother?
Unless the damage from not releasing exceeds the damage from releasing (which
I think is becoming the case for Romney), it's just unnecessary information.

~~~
myko
I thought we had his 2010 returns and an estimation of his 2011 returns?

------
jmsduran
I'm calling their bluff, sounds very much like a scam to get money off people
who fall for it.

------
tlow
This is quite clever; it seems it is possible that all three groups could
possibly pay.

Would they be able to remove that amount of money from the bitcoin system
without affecting the conversion rate substantially, or is this loss near
negligible?

------
alkimie
It is fascinating that none of the major news outlets seems to have reported
this as of yet.

------
dia80
Surely if it's true he needs to release his tax records and play "Don't give
in to criminals". Might even make him look good / a victim.

The chance of seeing the inside of a jail massively outweighs the chance of
these guys getting any money...

------
amalag
They need to release a few random line items as proof, otherwise it's a nice
scam.

------
brentk
[http://www.freewoodpost.com/2012/07/28/anonymous-hacks-
irs-d...](http://www.freewoodpost.com/2012/07/28/anonymous-hacks-irs-database-
publishes-romney-tax-returns/)

~~~
jredwards
To spare everyone the trouble: unrelated satire from months ago.

------
evilDagmar
I thought there was supposed to be an effort to ensure accuracy in posting
titles--Anonymous didn't have a damn thing to do with this.

------
DonnyV
Kind of a coincidence this comes out right after the FBI Apple hack. Looks
like someone wants everyone to look the other way.

------
tlrobinson
"anonymous group" not THE "Anonymous"

~~~
wmil
Isn't the point of the name supposed to be that anyone can be THE Anonymous?

~~~
qbrass
If you claim to be Anonymous, you get to be Anonymous.

If you act anonymously, you're just being anonymous.

------
dantiberian
1 Million USD = 93,000 BTC at an exchange rate of ~$10.70

------
drivebyacct2
Can this be considered terrorism? Surely, blackmail, but also terrorism? Just
curious.

edit: Since I received record fast downvotes, I'll clarify that this is not
meant to be a political comment, jesus.

~~~
mtgx
If you want to dilute what the words means to the point it can mean just about
any crime, sure. But if you're referring to the strict term, then no.

~~~
drivebyacct2
>the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion

Which word am I diluting exactly? If Romney is as afraid of releasing his
taxes as many imply, would he not be fearful of their release?

edit2: thanks for the replies, I think I understand why y'all disagree and I
think that I agree with you. It's not systematic and it's not being used to
intimidate others, it's too focused, basically.

~~~
MartinCron
Part of the idea of terrorism (and hate crimes, for that matter) is that the
victims aren't just the ones immediately impacted, but other people as well.
The aim of terrorism is to create a climate of fear in those who live. I will
always remember the first time I flew on an airplane after September 11, 2001.

I strongly doubt that this act was designed to strike fear into the hearts of
all of the _other_ fabulously wealthy presidential candidates who refuse to
disclose their tax returns.

