By msnbc.com staff and wire services
Updated at 9:41 a.m. (Pacific time)???Anonymous hackers have posted a YouTube video of a candid conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard in which investigators talk about hacking suspects, including a 15-year-old one UK-based law enforcement official called ?a bit of an idiot? and a ?pain in the butt.?
This sensitive conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard was recorded by the very people they were trying to catch, the hacking group known as Anonymous claimed Friday.?
The group released a nearly 17-minute-long recording of what appears to be a Jan. 17 conference call devoted to tracking and prosecuting members of the loose-knit hacking group. (Hear it below.)
The recording's authenticity could not immediately be verified, and it's not clear how the hackers got their hands on it. It appears to have been edited to bleep out the names of some of the suspects being discussed.?
But there was enough on the call to clearly hear the investigators talk about a 15-year-old who they say goes by the handle of Tehwongz, who one official said was arrested just before Christmas for his part in the Project Mayhem hack of the Manchester Credit Union. The UK-based investigator said the teen was currently under the subject of a local police investigation and that his hard drive was in custody. The teen, he said, had written a?a statement explaining how he came to become a hacker and what things he has done, including hacking into a gaming site with access to 32,000 users and their financial information.
British police say the intercepted phone call between cybercrime investigators from the FBI and Scotland Yard poses no immediate risk to operations.?
London police confirmed in a statement Friday that one of its e-crimes specialist was on the intercepted conference call but said that "at this stage no operational risks" to the police service had been identified.?
It said it was still assessing the breach and noted that the FBI was investigating.?
The statement added that "we are not prepared to discuss (it) further."?
Listen to the conference call for yourself in this video:
Anonymous also published an email purportedly sent by an FBI agent which gave details and a password for accessing the call.?
"The FBI might be curious how we're able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now," the group gloated in a message posted to Twitter.
Amid the material published by Anonymous was a message purportedly sent by an FBI agent to international law enforcement agencies. It invites his foreign counterparts to join the call to "discuss the on-going investigations related to Anonymous ... and other associated splinter groups." The email contained a phone number and password for accessing the call.?
The email is addressed to officials in the U.K., Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and France, but only American and British officials can be heard on the recording.
Emails to the FBI agent and others coded in on the call were not immediately returned, but the discussion itself appears sensitive. Those on the call talk about what legal strategy to pursue in the cases of Ryan Cleary and Jake Davis ? two British suspects linked to Anonymous ? and discuss details of the evidence gathered against other suspects.
Among the details the investigators disclosed are "indecent images" and an estimated six to eight weeks it would take to go over chat logs.
Karen Todner, a lawyer for Cleary, said that the recording could be "incredibly sensitive" and warned that such data breaches had the potential to derail the police's work.
"If they haven't secured their email it could potentially prejudice the investigation," she told The Associated Press.
Anonymous is an amorphous collection of Internet enthusiasts, pranksters and activists whose targets have included the Church of Scientology, the music industry, and financial companies such as Visa and MasterCard.
Following a spate of arrests across the world, the group and its various offshoots have focused their attention on law enforcement in general and the FBI in particular.?
Reporting also by Raphael Satter, Associated Press.?Follow Raphael Satter on Twitter.?
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