Team Poison hackers claim to have recorded anti-terrorist hotline calls

The force said it launched an investigation today after being made aware that the phone calls might have been breached (Getty Images)

The Metropolitan Police is today investigating claims that the hacking group Team Poison illegally recorded calls made to its anti-terrorist hotline.

The hacking group today claimed that a group member eavesdropped on sensitive counter-terror conversations after bypassing out of date technology.

In a four-minute recording of a conversation anti-terror officers are heard saying the hotline had been bombarded with around 700 phone calls from the Team Poison group.

The hactivist group posted a recording to the online video site YouTube which appeared to show them speaking to the hotline.

Detectives said today that "appropriate action would be taken" in response to the posting of the clips.

The leader of the Team Poison group claimed today that they had dropped a "24-hour phone bomb" on security officers, and that it was "easy" to carry out the hack.

One of the clips shows a man identifying himself as 'Trick' telling an officer, "Knowledge is power... We embarrass governments and f*** the police."

In another recording officers appear to be discussing counter-terror operations as a Team Poison member listens.

Trick, who reportedly launched Team Poison in 2010, also emailed the Press Association saying that the group had bypassed outdated technology, and had compromised a server based in Malaysia to record the calls.

Trick said, “The phone denial of service was done via a custom script for Asterisk which was installed on an overseas server.

The conversation was tapped into via a private phreaking method, their phone system is old and we found a way to get in via basic but private phreaking technique."

If proven to be genuine the security breach is likely to be very embarrassing for the Metropolitan police, and comes just days after another hacking group, 'Anonymous', managed to shut-down the Home Office website with a distributed denial of service attack - an attack that involves bombarding the websites with requests.

Anonymous also claimed to have attacked the Ministry Of Justice and the No.10 websites.

The group claimed the action was in response to proposed new laws which would extend the powers the government has to monitor internet activity.

This is not the first time that a hacking group has been able to access the private telephone conversations of Scotland Yard officers.

In February Anonymous released a recording of call between the UK police and FBI officers.

The Team Poison member who today claimed to be involved in the hacked phone calls today also cited the proposed changes to web monitoring as well as the UK-US extradition laws as the reason for the attack.

"We done it due to the recent events where the counter-terrorist command and the UK court system have allowed the extradition of Babar Ahmad, Adel Abdel Bary and a few others... we also done it to due the new 'snooping' laws where the GCHQ can 'spy' on anyone and everyone", he said.