The activist group known as Anonymous, sometimes referred to as hacktivists given that their members are known to hack to into various institutions when trying to get a specific point across, are gaining the FBI’s attention for hacking into American government networks and systems and stealing information.

Quoting FBI sources, Reuters says the group was able to gain access to data of government organizations through a weakness in Adobe’s ColdFusion software. After using this weakness they set up back doors to allow repeat access, and  have been doing so since last December. Among the data taken was information of over a 100 thousand government employees as well as close to 2,000 bank accounts.

The hackers claiming to be members of Anonymous are apparently making these attacks in response to Lauri Love. Lauri was the hacker in the UK who is said to have been responsible for hacking into NASA as well as a couple other agencies. Love is facing charges in New Jersey for conspiracy as well as unauthorized access of a government computer.

The FBI is trying to catch the hackers responsible in these recent attacks, but it’s unclear if they’ll also go after Anonymous as a whole, which have no central leadership. Also not all members of Anonymous are hackers and some use it to fight injustices they see in society. The group brought a considerable amount of light onto the Steubenville rape case, in which the defendants, Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmon, were eventually found guilty.

Again, a story like this is yet another reminder of how insecure security systems in places like the government, where they should be the most secure, are.

[via The Verge, Reuters, Huffington Post, image via zigazou76’s flickr]