Investigators charge five Lulzsec members with hacking
07 Mar 2012
Hacker group `LulzSec' that frequently taunted government investigators over the last year as they published sensitive data taken from myriad public and corporate web sites, may have learned what happens when you mock the feds for too long.
Authorities announced that five men in the UK, Ireland, New York, and Chicago had been slapped with charges related to hacking and added the alleged LulzSec leader, known as Sabu, had entered a guilty plea on 15 August to 12 counts of computer hacking conspiracies and other crimes.
According to the US Attorney's Office in New York, Hector Xavier Monsegur, 28, was arrested and released in June on a $50,000 bond, and a man called Jake Davis, also known as Topiary, was arrested in the UK last July.
The alleged members of LulzSec are facing accusations of launching computer attacks against Fox Broadcasting, PBS, and global intelligence firm Stratfor. The group stands accused of stealing confidential information -- including passwords -- and its public release, hijacking e-mail accounts and even secretly eavesdropping on a conference call in which the FBI and Scotland Yard talked about trying to catch them.
However, all the excitement generated in the media with their arrests, would only have a marginal impact on LulzSec, which may be silenced for some time, but, according to network security experts, it would likely not put an end to the spate of high-profile, politically motivated hacks carried out by LulzSec's brethren in the online activist collective Anonymous.
Even law enforcement officials who had been the target of their taunts dismiss the possibility of a major blow to Anonymous. Speaking to CNET on condition of anonymity, a member of Anonymous downplayed the impact of the arrests and said people from Anonymous got arrested all the time, including 25 last week, by Interpol. It was not like the arrests would bring the whole group down, he said, adding they were involved but were not the kingpins like what the FBI had claimed.
