Reference: ‘Anonymous’ is the name of a collective group of activist hackers who originally posted videos scheduling the Occupy Wall Street protests. These videos spread virally and played a significant role in the O.W.S. grassroots campaign.

The hacker collective ‘Anonymous’ says it has stolen four thousand emails, passwords and credit card details from a US-based security think-tank “Stratfor”.

Stratfor’s clients include the US Department of Defense, US Air Force, Apple, law enforcement agencies and media organizations.

Anonymous said the list it had posted was a small slice of the 200 gigabytes worth of plunder it stole from Stratfor and promised more leaks. It said it was able to get the credit card details partially because Stratfor didn’t bother encrypting them.

Hackers said the goal was to charge funds from individuals’ accounts to give away as Christmas donations to charities. This act is in theme with the message of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the act was obviously not accidentally done on Christmas.

Allen Barr one of the individuals whose data was compromised noticed a receipt to the American Red Cross.  Barr is a recent retiree from the Texas Department of Banking and said last Friday that a total of $700 had been charged on his account.

“It was all charities, the Red Cross, CARE, Save the Children. So when the credit card company called my wife she wasn’t sure whether I was just donating… It made me feel terrible. It made my wife feel terrible. We had to close the account.”

The implications of this are as follows: ‘Anonymous’ the “internet muscle” behind Occupy Wall Street has stolen the personal data of U.S. Military members and federal employees. It has released their personal identity and credit card information throughout the internet and has so far made charges in the amount of $1 million to charities. A message on Twitter claims they are just getting started and this represents only the “A’s and B’s” on the list.