LulzSec
Encyclopedia
Lulz Security, commonly abbreviated as LulzSec, is a computer hacker
group that claims responsibility for several high profile attacks, including the compromise of user accounts from Sony Pictures in 2011. The group also claimed responsibility for taking the CIA website offline. The group has been described as a "cyber terrorism group" by the Arizona Department of Public Safety
after their systems were compromised and information leaked. Other security professionals have applauded LulzSec for drawing attention to insecure systems and the dangers of password reuse. It has gained attention due to its high profile targets and the sarcastic messages it has posted in the aftermath of its attacks.
At just after midnight (BST
, UT
+01) on 26 June 2011, LulzSec released a "50 days of lulz" statement, which they claimed to be their final release, confirming that LulzSec consisted of six members, and that their website is to be taken down. This breaking up of the group was unexpected. The release included accounts and passwords from many different sources. Despite claims of retirement, the group committed another hack against newspapers owned by News Corporation
on 18 July, defacing them with false reports regarding the death of Rupert Murdoch
. The London Metropolitan Police has announced the arrests of two teenagers they allege are LulzSec members T-flow and Topiary
. The group helped launch Operation AntiSec
, a joint effort involving LulzSec, Anonymous
, and other hackers.
s), "laughing out loud", which often signifies laughter at the victim of a prank, and "Sec," short for "Security". The Wall Street Journal has characterized its attacks as closer to Internet pranks rather than serious cyber-warfare, while the group itself claims to possess the capability of stronger attacks. It has gained attention in part due to its brazen claims of responsibility and lighthearted taunting of corporations that have been hacked. It frequently refers to Internet meme
s when defacing websites. The group first emerged in May 2011, and has successfully attacked the websites of several major corporations. It specializes in finding websites with poor security, and then stealing and posting information from them online. It has used well-known straightforward methods, such as SQL injection
, to attack its target websites. Several media sources have described their tactics as grey hat
hacking. Members of the group may have been involved in a previous attack against the security firm HBGary
.
The group has used the motto "Laughing at your security since 2011!" and its website, created in June 2011, plays the theme from The Love Boat
. It announces its exploits via Twitter and its own website, often accompanied with lighthearted ASCII art
drawings of boats. Its website also includes a Bitcoin
donation to help fund its activities. Although exact motivation of the group is unknown, Ian Paul of PC World
has written that, "As its name suggests, LulzSec claims to be interested in mocking and embarrassing companies by exposing security flaws rather than stealing data for criminal purposes." The group has also been critical of white hat hackers, claiming that many of them have been corrupted by their employers.
Some in the security community have lauded them for raising awareness of the widespread lack of effective security against hackers. They have also been credited with inspiring LulzRaft
, a group which has been implicated in several high-profile website hacks in Canada.
The group's first recorded attack was against Fox.com
's website. It claimed responsibility for leaking information, including passwords, altering several employees' LinkedIn
profiles, and leaking a database of X Factor
contestants containing contact information of 73,000 contestants. They claimed to do so because the rapper Common had been referred to as "vile" on air.
The group has begun taking suggestions for sites to hit with denial-of-service attack
s. The group has also been redirecting telephone numbers to different customer support lines, including the line for World of Warcraft
, magnets.com, and the FBI Detroit office. The group claims this sends five to 20 calls per second to these sources, overwhelming their support officers. On 24 June 2011, The Guardian
released leaked logs of the one of the group's IRC chats, revealing that the core group is a small group of hackers with a leader Sabu who exercises large control over the group's activities. It also reveals that the group has connections, though is not formally affiliated with, Anonymous
. Some LulzSec members had once been prominent Anonymous members, including member Topiary
.
At just after midnight (GMT) on 26 June 2011, LulzSec released a "50 days of lulz" statement, which they claimed to be their final release, confirming that LulzSec consisted of six members, and that their website is to be taken down. The group claimed that they had planned to be active for only fifty days from the beginning. "We're not quitting because we're afraid of law enforcement. The press are getting bored of us, and we're getting bored of us." a group member said in an interview to The Associated Press. Members of the group have been reported to have joined with Anonymous members to continue the AntiSec operation. However, despite claiming to retire, the group attacked the websites of British newspaper The Times
and The Sun on 18 July, leaving a false story on the death of owner Rupert Murdoch
.
, and through confirmation from the group itself.
Associates and former members include:
, they stated they did so in retaliation for what they perceived as unfair treatment of Wikileaks
in a Frontline documentary entitled WikiSecrets. A page they inserted to the PBS website included the title "FREE BRADLEY MANNING. FUCK FRONTLINE!" The 20 June announcement of "Operation Anti-Security" contained justification for attacks on government targets, citing supposed government efforts to "dominate and control our Internet ocean" and accusing them of corruption and breaching privacy. The media has most often described them as grey hat hackers.
Karim Hijazi, CEO of security company Unveillance, has accused the group of blackmailing
him by offering not to attack his company or its affiliates in exchange for money. LulzSec responded by claiming that Hijazi offered to pay them to attack his business opponents and that they never intended to take any money from him. LulzSec has denied responsibility for misuse of any of the data they breach and release. Instead, they place the blame on users who reuse passwords on multiple websites and on companies with inadequate security in place.
In June 2011, the group released a manifesto outlining why they perform hacks and website takedowns. In it they reiterated that "we do things just because we find it entertaining" and that watching the results can be "priceless". However, they also claim to be drawing attention to computer security
flaws and holes. They contend that many other hackers exploit and steal user information without releasing the names publicly or telling people they may possibly have been hacked. LulzSec said that by releasing lists of hacked usernames or informing the public of vulnerable websites, it gives users the opportunity to change names and passwords elsewhere that might otherwise have been exploited, and businesses will be alarmed that they should upgrade their security.
The group's latest attacks have had a more political tone. They claim to want to expose the "racist and corrupt nature" of the military and law enforcement
. They have also expressed opposition to the War on Drugs
. Lulzsec's Operation Anti-Security has been characterized as a protest against government censorship and monitoring of the internet. In a question and answer session with BBC
Newsnight
, LulzSec member Whirlpool said, "Politically motivated ethical hacking is more fulfilling". He claimed the loosening of copyright laws and the rollback of what he sees as corrupt racial profiling
practices as some of the group's issues.
. They leaked several passwords, LinkedIn profiles, and the names of 73,000 X Factor contestants. Soon after on 15 May, they released the transaction logs of 3,100 Automated Teller Machine
s in the United Kingdom. In May 2011, members of Lulz Security gained international attention for hacking into the American Public Broadcasting System (PBS) website. They stole user data and posted a fake story on the site which claimed that Tupac Shakur
and Biggie Smalls were still alive and living in New Zealand. In the aftermath of the attack, CNN
referred to the responsible group as the "Lulz Boat".
Lulz Security claimed that some of its hacks, including its attack on PBS, were motivated by a desire to defend WikiLeaks
and Bradley Manning. A Fox News report on the group quoted one commentator, Brandon Pike, who claimed that Lulz Security is affiliated with the hacktivist
group Anonymous
. Lulz Security claimed that Pike had actually hired it to hack PBS. Pike denied the accusation and claims it was leveled against him because he said Lulz Security was a splinter of Anonymous.
In June 2011, members of the group claimed responsibility for an attack against Sony Pictures that took data that included "names, passwords, e-mail addresses, home addresses and dates of birth for thousands of people." The group claimed that it used a SQL injection attack, and was motivated by Sony's legal action against George Hotz
for jailbreaking into the PlayStation 3
. The group claims it will launch an attack that will be the "beginning of the end" for Sony. Some of the compromised user information has since been used in scams. The group claimed to have compromised over 1,000,000 accounts, though Sony claims the real number was around 37,500.
, but both the group and Nintendo itself report that no particularly valuable information was found by the hackers. LulzSec claims that it did not mean to harm Nintendo, declaring: "We're not targeting Nintendo. We like the N64
too much — we sincerely hope Nintendo plugs the gap."
On 8 June 2011, LulzSec hacked into the website of Black & Berg Cybersecurity Consulting, a small network security company, and changed the image displayed on their front page to one containing the LulzSec logo. They did so after the company had issued a "Cybersecurity For The 21st Century, Hacking Challenge", in which they challenged hackers to hack the site and alter the homepage graphic. The intrusion came after Joe Black, an owner of the company posted the message "Black & Berg Cybersecurity Consulting appreciate all the hard work that you're putting in. Your Hacking = Clients for us. Thx" to the LulzSec Twitter account. Though Black & Berg offered a prize of $10,000 and a position with the company for the successful hack, members of LulzSec declined the offer. Instead, the website contained the reply "DONE, THAT WAS EASY. KEEP THE MONEY, WE DO IT FOR THE LULZ".
On 11 June, reports emerged that LulzSec reportedly hacked into and stole user information from the pornography website
www.pron.com. They obtained and published around 26,000 e-mail addresses and passwords. Among the information stolen are records of two users who subscribed using email addresses associated with the Malaysian government, three users who subscribed using United States military email addresses and 55 users who LulzSec claimed were administrators of other adult-oriented websites. Following the breach, Facebook locked the accounts of all users who had used the published e-mail addresses, and also blocked new Facebook accounts opened using the leaked e-mail addresses. They feared that users of the site would get hacked after LulzSec encouraged people to try and see if these people used identical user name and password combinations on Facebook as well.
LulzSec hacked into the Bethesda Game Studios network and posted information taken from the network onto the Internet, though they refrained from publishing 200,000 compromised accounts. LulzSec posted the following message to Twitter regarding the attack, "Bethesda, we broke into your site over two months ago. We've had all of your Brink users for weeks, Please fix your junk, thanks!"
On 14 June, LulzSec took down four websites by request of fans as part of their "Titanic Take-down Tuesday". These websites were Minecraft
, League of Legends
, The Escapist
, and IT security company FinFisher. They also attacked the login servers of the massively multiplayer online game EVE Online
, which also disabled the game's front-facing website, and the League of Legends login servers. Most of the takedowns were performed with distributed denial-of-service attacks. On 15 June, LulzSec took down the main server of S2 Games' Heroes of Newerth
as another phone request. They claimed, "Heroes of Newerth master login server is down. They need some treatment. Also, DotA
is better."
On 16 June, LulzSec posted a random assortment of 62,000 emails and passwords to MediaFire
. LulzSec states they released this in return for supporters flooding the 4chan
/b/ board. The group did not say what websites the combinations were for and encouraged followers to plug them into various sites until they gained access to an account. Some have reported gaining access to Facebook accounts and changing images to sexual content and others to using the Amazon.com
accounts of others to purchase several books. Writerspace.com, a literary website, later admitted that the addresses and passwords came from users of their site.
chapter sites, a non-profit organization affiliated with the FBI. The group leaked some of InfraGard member e-mails and a database of local users. The group defaced the website posting the following message, "LET IT FLOW YOU STUPID FBI BATTLESHIPS," accompanied with a video. LulzSec has posted the following message regarding the attack:
On 9 June, LulzSec sent an email to the administrators of the British National Health Service
, informing them of a security vulnerability discovered in NHS systems. LulzSec stated that they did not intend to exploit this vulnerability, saying in the email that "We mean you no harm and only want to help you fix your tech issues."
On 13 June, LulzSec released the e-mails and passwords of a number of users of senate.gov, the website of the United States Senate
. The information released also included the root directory
of parts of the website. LulzSec stated, "This is a small, just-for-kicks release of some internal data from senate.gov — is this an act of war, gentlemen? Problem?" referencing a recent statement by the Pentagon
that some cyberattacks could be considered an act of war
. No highly sensitive information appears in the release.
On 15 June, LulzSec launched an attack on www.cia.gov, the public website of the United States Central Intelligence Agency
, taking the website offline with a distributed denial-of-service attack. The website was down from 5:48 pm to 8:00 pm eastern time.
characterized the operation as an open declaration of cyberwarfare against big government and corporations. Their first target of the operation was the Serious Organised Crime Agency
(SOCA), a national law enforcement agency
of the United Kingdom. LulzSec claimed to have taken the website offline at about 11 am EST on 20 June 2011, though it only remained down for a few minutes. While the attack appeared to be a DDoS attack, LulzSec tweeted that actual hacking was taking place "behind the scenes". At about 6:10 pm EST on 20 June, SOCA's website went down yet again. SOCA's website was back online sometime between 20 and 21 June. The website of the local district government of Jianhua District
in Qiqihar
, China
, was also knocked offline. Early in the morning on 22 June, it was revealed that LulzSec's "Brazil
ian unit" had taken down two Brazilian government websites, brasil.gov.br and presidencia.gov.br. They also brought down the website of Brazilian energy company Petrobras
.
On 20 June, two members on the "Lulz Boat" reportedly leaked logs that LulzSec was going to leak on 21 June. They also claimed that the two had leaked information that aided authorities in locating and arresting Ryan Cleary, a man loosely affiliated with the group. LulzSec posted various personal information about the two on Pastebin
including IP address
es and physical addresses. Both had been involved with cyber-crimes in the past, and one had been involved with hacking the game Deus Ex
.
After LulzSec encouragement, some began tagging public locations with physical graffiti
reading "Antisec" as part of the operation. Numerous beachfronts in Mission Beach, San Diego were vandalized with the phrase. Some local news organizations mistook the graffiti in Mission Beach as signs of the Antisec Movement
. Many commenters on the local news websites corrected this.
On 23 June, LulzSec released a number of documents pertaining to the Arizona Department of Public Safety
, which they titled "chinga la migra", which roughly translates to "fuck the border patrol". The leaked items included email addresses and passwords, as well as hundreds of documents marked "sensitive" or "for official use only". LulzSec claimed that this was in protest of the law passed in Arizona requiring some aliens to carry registration documents at all times. Arizona officials have confirmed the intrusion. Arizona police have complained that the release of officer identities and the method used to combat gangs could endanger the lives of police officers.
On 24 June 2011, LulzSecBrazil published what they claimed were access codes and passwords that they used to access the Petrobras website and employee profile data they had taken using the information. Petrobras denied that any data had been stolen, and LulzSecBrazil removed the information from their Twitter feed a few hours later. The group also released personal information regarding President of Brazil
Dilma Rousseff
and Mayor of São Paulo Gilberto Kassab
.
On 25 June 2011, LulzSec released what they described as their last data dump. The release contained an enormous amount of information from various sources. The files contained a half gigabyte
of internal information from telecommunication company AT&T
, including information relating to its release of 4G
LTE and details pertaining to over 90,000 personal phones used by IBM
. The IP address
es of several large corporations including Sony, Viacom
, and Disney, EMI
, and NBC Universal
were included. It also contained over 750,000 username and password combinations from several websites, including 200,000 email addresses, usernames, and encrypted passwords from hackforums.net; 12,000 names, usernames, and passwords of the NATO online bookshop; half a million usernames and encrypted passwords of players of the online game Battlefield Heroes
; 50,000 usernames, email addresses, and encrypted passwords of various video game forum users; and 29 users of Priority Investigations, an Irish private investigation
company. Also included were an internal manual for AOL
engineering staff and a screencapture of a vandalized page from navy.mil, the website of the United States Navy
. Members of the group continued the operation with members of Anonymous after disbanding.
Despite claiming to have retired, on 18 July LulzSec hacked into the website of British newspaper The Sun. The group redirected the newspaper's website to an also-hacked redesign website of another newspaper The Times
, altering the site to resemble The Sun and posting a fake story claiming that Rupert Murdoch
had died after ingesting a fatal dose of palladium
. They objected to the involvement of News Corporation
, the Murdoch-owned company that publishes The Sun and The Times, in a large phone hacking scandal. The hacked website also contained a webcomic depicting LulzSec deciding on and carrying out the attack. The group later redirected The Sun website to their Twitter feed. News International released a statement regarding the attacks before having the page the statement appeared on also redirected to the LulzSec Twitter page and eventually taken offline. The group also released the names and phone numbers of a reporter for The Sun and two others associated with the newspaper and encouraged their supporters to call them. They further included an old email address and password of former News International executive Rebekah Brooks. News Corporation took the websites offline as a precaution later in the day.
. LulzSec responded by saying that they had obtained no such data and that whoever posted the notice was not from the group. British officials say that they are investigating the incident but have found no evidence that any databases had been compromised or any information taken. The British government, upon concluding their investigation, called the claims that any information on the census was taken a hoax
.
In June 2011, assets belonging to newspaper publisher News International
were attacked, apparently in retaliation for reporting by The Sun of the arrest of Ryan Cleary, an associate of the group. The newspaper's website and a computer used in the publishing process of The Times
were attacked. However LulzSec denied any involvement, stating "we didn't attack The Sun or The Times in any way with any kind of DDoS attack".
were responsible for outing web designer and alleged LulzSec member Sven Slootweg, who they said used the online nickname Joepie91, and that they have intentions to do the same with every member. The group has expressed being motivated by what they perceive as LulzSec's low hacking abilities, bringing them media attention they do not deserve. One member of the group, Hex0010, proclaimed "We're here to show the world that they're nothing but a bunch of script kiddies. You think, 'I'm a bad-ass hacker because I can knock someone offline for a few minutes.' That's bullshit. Come on."
A group calling themselves Team Web Ninjas appeared in June 2011 saying they were angry over LulzSec release of the e-mail addresses and passwords of thousands of normal Internet users. They have attempted to publicly identify the online and real world identities of LulzSec leadership and claim to do so on behalf of the group's victims. The group has claimed to have identified and given to law enforcement the names of a number of the group's members, including someone they claim is a United States Marine.
The Jester
, a hacker who generally goes by the leetspeak handle th3j35t3r, has vowed to find and expose members of LulzSec. Claiming to perform hacks out of a sense of American patriotism, he has attempted to obtain and publish the real world personally identifiable information
of key members, whom he describes as "childish". On 24 June 2011, he claimed to have revealed the identity of LulzSec leader Sabu as an information technology consultant
possibly from New York City. On 24 June 2011, a hacker allegedly going by the name Oneiroi briefly took down the LulzSec website in what he labelled "Operation Supernova". The Twitter page for the group also briefly became unavailable.
On 24 June 2011, The Guardian
published leaked logs from one of the group's IRC channels. The logs were supposedly leaked by a disgruntled former member of the group who goes by the nickname m_nerva. After confirming that these leaked logs were indeed theirs, and that the logs revealed personal information on two members who had recently left the group due to the implications of attacking the FBI website, LulzSec went on to threaten m_nerva on their Twitter feed. LulzSec claimed that the logs were not from one of their core chatting channels, but rather a secondary channel used to screen potential backups and gather research.
A short time before LulzSec claimed to be disbanding, a group calling itself the A-Team posted what they claimed was a full list of LulzSec members online along with numerous chat logs of the group communicating with each other. A rival hacker going by the name of TriCk also claimed to be working to reveal the group's identities and claimed that efforts on the part of rival hackers had pushed the group to disband for fear of being caught.
announced that they had arrested a 19 year old man from Wickford
, Essex, named by LulzSec and locally as Ryan Cleary, as part of an operation carried out in cooperation with the FBI. The suspect was arrested on charges of computer misuse
and fraud
, and later charged with five counts of computer hacking under the Criminal Law Act
and the Computer Misuse Act. News reports described him as an alleged member of LulzSec. LulzSec have since denied the man arrested was a member. A member of LulzSec claimed that the suspect was not part of the group, but did host one of its IRC channels on his server. British police representatives have confirmed that he is being questioned regarding alleged involvement in LulzSec attacks against the Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) and other targets. They also questioned him regarding an attack on the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry in November 2010. On 25 June 2011 the court released Cleary under the bail conditions that he did not leave his house without his mother and did not use any device connected to the internet. He had been diagnosed the previous week with Asperger syndrome
.
At around the same time as Cleary's arrest, Federal Bureau of Investigation
agents raided the Reston, Virginia
facility of Swiss
web hosting service
DigitalOne. The raid took several legitimate websites offline for hours as the agency looked for information on an undisclosed target. Media reports have speculated that the raid may have been related to the LulzSec investigation.
After LulzSec hacked into Arizona Department of Public Safety databases, law enforcement activated the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center. All Department of Public Safety employees had remote access
of their email accounts suspended. Officers that had their personal information and that of their families released publicly were given additional protection. They further reiterated that, despite having disbanded, members of LulzSec were still being pursued for criminal prosecution.
A few days before LulzSec disbanded, the FBI executed a search warrant
on an Iowa
home rented by Laurelai Bailey. Authorities interviewed her for five hours and confiscated her hard drives, camera, and other electronic equipment, but no charges were filed. Bailey denied being a member of the group, but did admit to chatting with members of LulzSec online and later leaking those chats. They were interested in having her infiltrate the group, but Bailey claimed that the members hated her and would never let her in. The questioning by the FBI led a local technical support
company to fire Laurelai, claiming that she had embarrassed the company.
On 27 June 2011, the FBI executed another search warrant in Hamilton, Ohio
. The local media connected the raid to the LulzSec investigation; however, the warrant is sealed, the name of the target was not revealed, and the FBI office in Cincinnati refused to comment on any possible connection between the group and the raid. No one in the residence was charged with a crime after the FBI served the warrant. Some reports suggested the house may belong to former LulzSec member m_nerva, who leaked a number of the group's logs to the press, and information leading to the warrant supplied by Ryan Cleary.
On 19 July 2011, the London Metropolitan Police announced the arrest of LulzSec member Tflow. A 16 year-old male was arrested in South London on charges of violating the Computer Misuse Act as part of an operation involving the arrest of several other hackers affiliated with Anonymous in the United States and United Kingdom. LulzSec once again denied that any of their membership had been arrested, stating "there are six of us, and we're all still here."
On the same day, the FBI arrested 21-year-old Lance Moore in Las Cruces, New Mexico
. He was accused of stealing thousands of documents and applications from AT&T that LulzSec published as part of their so called "final release". The FBI also arrested Scott Arciszewski, a 21-year old University of Central Florida
student. The criminal complaint against him claims that he hacked into and uploaded malicious files to the InfraGard website; he then informed LulzSec of the vulnerabilities he had inserted, allowing them to hack into the website as well.
The Police Central E-Crime Unit
arrested an 18-year-old man from Shetland on 27 July 2011 suspected of being LulzSec member Topiary
. They also searched the house of and interviewed a 17-year-old from Lincolnshire
possibly connected to the investigation. Scotland Yard later identified the man arrested as Yell, Shetland resident Jake Davis. He was charged with unauthorized access of a computer under the Computer Misuse Act 1990
, encouraging or assisting criminal activity under the Serious Crime Act 2007
, conspiracy to launch a denial-of-service attack against the Serious Organised Crime Unit contrary to the Criminal Law Act 1977
, and criminal conspiracy also under the Criminal Law Act 1977. Police confiscated a Dell
laptop and a 100-gigabyte hard drive that ran 16 different virtual machine
s. Details relating to an attack on Sony and hundreds of thousands of email addresses and passwords were found on the computer. A London court released Davis on bail under the conditions that he live under curfew with his parents and have no access to the internet. His lawyer Gideon Cammerman stated that, while his client did help publicize LulzSec and Anonymous attacks, he lacks the technical skills to have been anything but a sympathizer.
In early September 2011, Scotland Yard made two further arrests relating to LulzSec. Police arrested a 24-year-old male in Mexborough
, South Yorkshire
and a 20-year-old male in Warminster
, Wiltshire
. The two are accused of conspiring to commit offenses under the Computer Misuse Act of 1990; police said that the arrests related to investigations into LulzSec member Kayla.
On 22 September 2011, the FBI arrested Cody Kretsinger, a 23-year-old from Phoenix, Arizona
who has been indicted on charges of conspiracy and the unauthorized impairment of a protected computer. He is suspected of using the name recursion and assisting LulzSec in their early hack against Sony Pictures Entertainment, though he allegedly erased the hard drives he used to carry out the attack. Kretsinger was released on his own recognizance under the conditions that he not access the internet except while at work and that he not travel to any states other than Arizona, California, or Illinois. The case against him was filed in Los Angeles
, where Sony Pictures is located.
Hacker (computer security)
In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...
group that claims responsibility for several high profile attacks, including the compromise of user accounts from Sony Pictures in 2011. The group also claimed responsibility for taking the CIA website offline. The group has been described as a "cyber terrorism group" by the Arizona Department of Public Safety
Arizona Department of Public Safety
Arizona Department of Public Safety is a law enforcement agency with its usual focus being protection of all Arizona highways. The current Director is Robert C. Halliday, a previously retired DPS commander, who began his 5-year term in February 2010...
after their systems were compromised and information leaked. Other security professionals have applauded LulzSec for drawing attention to insecure systems and the dangers of password reuse. It has gained attention due to its high profile targets and the sarcastic messages it has posted in the aftermath of its attacks.
At just after midnight (BST
British Summer Time
Western European Summer Time is a summer daylight saving time scheme, 1 hour ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. It is used in the following places:* the Canary Islands* Portugal * Ireland...
, UT
Universal Time
Universal Time is a time scale based on the rotation of the Earth. It is a modern continuation of Greenwich Mean Time , i.e., the mean solar time on the Prime Meridian at Greenwich, and GMT is sometimes used loosely as a synonym for UTC...
+01) on 26 June 2011, LulzSec released a "50 days of lulz" statement, which they claimed to be their final release, confirming that LulzSec consisted of six members, and that their website is to be taken down. This breaking up of the group was unexpected. The release included accounts and passwords from many different sources. Despite claims of retirement, the group committed another hack against newspapers owned by News Corporation
News Corporation
News Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...
on 18 July, defacing them with false reports regarding the death of Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
. The London Metropolitan Police has announced the arrests of two teenagers they allege are LulzSec members T-flow and Topiary
Topiary (hacktivist)
Topiary is a hacktivist and self-described "Supporter of Anonymous Operations, WikiLeaks, and maintaining freedom on the Internet". He is heavily involved with the Internet group Anonymous, which have publicly claimed various online attacks, including hacking HBGary, Westboro Baptist Church, and...
. The group helped launch Operation AntiSec
Operation AntiSec
Operation Anti-Security, also referred to as Operation AntiSec or #AntiSec, is a series of hacking attacks performed by members of hacking group LulzSec, the group Anonymous, and others inspired by the announcement of the operation. LulzSec performed the earliest attacks of the operation, with the...
, a joint effort involving LulzSec, Anonymous
Anonymous (group)
Anonymous is an international hacking group, spread through the Internet, initiating active civil disobedience, while attempting to maintain anonymity. Originating in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, the term refers to the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic,...
, and other hackers.
Overview
LulzSec draws its name from the neologism "Lulz", (from LOLLOL
LOL is an acronym or abbreviation of "laughing out loud", "lots of luck", or "lots of love". In medical slang, it is used as an acronym for "little old lady", a reference to the novel House of God.LOL or Lol may also refer to:...
s), "laughing out loud", which often signifies laughter at the victim of a prank, and "Sec," short for "Security". The Wall Street Journal has characterized its attacks as closer to Internet pranks rather than serious cyber-warfare, while the group itself claims to possess the capability of stronger attacks. It has gained attention in part due to its brazen claims of responsibility and lighthearted taunting of corporations that have been hacked. It frequently refers to Internet meme
Internet meme
The term Internet meme is used to describe a concept that spreads via the Internet. The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although the latter concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information.-Description:...
s when defacing websites. The group first emerged in May 2011, and has successfully attacked the websites of several major corporations. It specializes in finding websites with poor security, and then stealing and posting information from them online. It has used well-known straightforward methods, such as SQL injection
SQL injection
A SQL injection is often used to attack the security of a website by inputting SQL statements in a web form to get a badly designed website in order to dump the database content to the attacker. SQL injection is a code injection technique that exploits a security vulnerability in a website's software...
, to attack its target websites. Several media sources have described their tactics as grey hat
Grey hat
A grey hat, in the hacking community, refers to a skilled hacker whose activities fall somewhere between white and black hat hackers on a variety of spectra. It may relate to whether they sometimes arguably act illegally, though in good will, or to show how they disclose vulnerabilities...
hacking. Members of the group may have been involved in a previous attack against the security firm HBGary
HBGary
HBGary is a technology security company. Two distinct but affiliated firms carry the name: HBGary Federal, which sells its products to the US Federal Government, and HB Gary, Inc. Its other clients include information assurance companies, computer emergency response teams, and computer forensic...
.
The group has used the motto "Laughing at your security since 2011!" and its website, created in June 2011, plays the theme from The Love Boat
The Love Boat
The Love Boat is an American television series set on a cruise ship, which aired on the ABC Television Network from September 24,1977, until May 24,1986.The show starred Gavin MacLeod as the ship's captain...
. It announces its exploits via Twitter and its own website, often accompanied with lighthearted ASCII art
ASCII art
ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters...
drawings of boats. Its website also includes a Bitcoin
Bitcoin
Bitcoin is a decentralized, peer-to-peer network over which users make transactions that are tracked and verified through this network. The word Bitcoin also refers to the digital currency implemented as the currency medium for user transactions over this network...
donation to help fund its activities. Although exact motivation of the group is unknown, Ian Paul of PC World
PC World (magazine)
PC World is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal-technology products and services...
has written that, "As its name suggests, LulzSec claims to be interested in mocking and embarrassing companies by exposing security flaws rather than stealing data for criminal purposes." The group has also been critical of white hat hackers, claiming that many of them have been corrupted by their employers.
Some in the security community have lauded them for raising awareness of the widespread lack of effective security against hackers. They have also been credited with inspiring LulzRaft
LulzRaft
LulzRaft is the name of a computer hacker group or individual that gained international attention in 2011 due to a series of high-profile attacks on Canadian websites...
, a group which has been implicated in several high-profile website hacks in Canada.
The group's first recorded attack was against Fox.com
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
's website. It claimed responsibility for leaking information, including passwords, altering several employees' LinkedIn
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French,...
profiles, and leaking a database of X Factor
The X Factor (U.S.)
The X Factor is an American television music competition to find new singing talent. The show is produced by creator Simon Cowell's company SYCOtv. It premiered on September 21, 2011 on Fox....
contestants containing contact information of 73,000 contestants. They claimed to do so because the rapper Common had been referred to as "vile" on air.
The group has begun taking suggestions for sites to hit with denial-of-service attack
Denial-of-service attack
A denial-of-service attack or distributed denial-of-service attack is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users...
s. The group has also been redirecting telephone numbers to different customer support lines, including the line for World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...
, magnets.com, and the FBI Detroit office. The group claims this sends five to 20 calls per second to these sources, overwhelming their support officers. On 24 June 2011, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
released leaked logs of the one of the group's IRC chats, revealing that the core group is a small group of hackers with a leader Sabu who exercises large control over the group's activities. It also reveals that the group has connections, though is not formally affiliated with, Anonymous
Anonymous (group)
Anonymous is an international hacking group, spread through the Internet, initiating active civil disobedience, while attempting to maintain anonymity. Originating in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, the term refers to the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic,...
. Some LulzSec members had once been prominent Anonymous members, including member Topiary
Topiary (hacktivist)
Topiary is a hacktivist and self-described "Supporter of Anonymous Operations, WikiLeaks, and maintaining freedom on the Internet". He is heavily involved with the Internet group Anonymous, which have publicly claimed various online attacks, including hacking HBGary, Westboro Baptist Church, and...
.
At just after midnight (GMT) on 26 June 2011, LulzSec released a "50 days of lulz" statement, which they claimed to be their final release, confirming that LulzSec consisted of six members, and that their website is to be taken down. The group claimed that they had planned to be active for only fifty days from the beginning. "We're not quitting because we're afraid of law enforcement. The press are getting bored of us, and we're getting bored of us." a group member said in an interview to The Associated Press. Members of the group have been reported to have joined with Anonymous members to continue the AntiSec operation. However, despite claiming to retire, the group attacked the websites of British newspaper The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
and The Sun on 18 July, leaving a false story on the death of owner Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
.
Members and associates
LulzSec consists of six core members. The online handles of these six have been established through various attempts by other hacking groups to release personal information of group members on the internet, leaked IRC logs given to The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, and through confirmation from the group itself.
- SabuSabu (hacktivist)Sabu is an alleged leader of the hacking group LulzSec. He features prominently in the group's published IRC chats, and is a supporter of the "Free Topiary" campaign....
– One of the group's founders who seemed to act as a kind of leader for the group, often Sabu decides what targets to attack next and who could participate in these attacks. He may have been part of the Anonymous group that hacked HBGaryHBGaryHBGary is a technology security company. Two distinct but affiliated firms carry the name: HBGary Federal, which sells its products to the US Federal Government, and HB Gary, Inc. Its other clients include information assurance companies, computer emergency response teams, and computer forensic...
. Various attempts to release his real identity have claimed that he is an information technology consultantInformation technology consultingInformation technology consulting is a field that focuses on advising businesses on how best to use information technology to meet their business objectives...
with the strongest hacking skills of the group and a knowledge of the PythonPython (programming language)Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
programming language. - TopiaryTopiary (hacktivist)Topiary is a hacktivist and self-described "Supporter of Anonymous Operations, WikiLeaks, and maintaining freedom on the Internet". He is heavily involved with the Internet group Anonymous, which have publicly claimed various online attacks, including hacking HBGary, Westboro Baptist Church, and...
– Topiary is also a suspected former member of the Anonymous AnonOps, where he used to perform media relations, including hacking the website of the Westboro Baptist ChurchWestboro Baptist ChurchThe Westboro Baptist Church is an independent Baptist church known for its extreme stance against homosexuality and its protest activities, which include picketing funerals and desecrating the American flag. The church is widely described as a hate group and is monitored as such by the...
during a live interview. Topiary ran the LulzSec Twitter account on a daily basis; following the announcement of LulzSec's dissolution, he deleted all the posts on his twitter page, except for one, which stated: "You cannot arrest an idea". Police arrested a man from Shetland, United KingdomUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
suspected of being Topiary on 27 July 2011. The man was later identified as Jake Davis and was charged with five counts, including unauthorized access of a computer and conspiracy. - Kayla – Also identified as "lol" in LulzSec chat logs, Kayla owns a botnetBotnetA botnet is a collection of compromised computers connected to the Internet. Termed "bots," they are generally used for malicious purposes. When a computer becomes compromised, it becomes a part of a botnet...
used by the group in their distributed denial-of-service attacks. The botnet is reported to consist of about 8,000 infected computer servers. Kayla also may have participated in the Anonymous operation against HBGary. - T-flow – The fourth founding member of the group identified in chat logs, attempts to identify him have labelled him a PHPPHPPHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
coder, web developerWeb developerA web developer is a software developer or software engineer who specializes in, or is specifically engaged in, the development of World Wide Web applications, or distributed network applications that are run over HTTP from a web server to a web browser....
, and performer of scams on PayPalPayPalPayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....
. The group placed him in charge of maintenance and security of the group's website lulzsecurity.com. London Metropolitan Police announced the arrest of a 16 year-old hacker going by the handle Tflow on 19 July 2011. - Avunit – He is one of the core six members of the group, but not a founding member. He left the group after their self-labelled "Fuck the FBI Friday". He was also affiliated with Anonymous AnonOps HQ.
- Pwnsauce – Pwnsauce joined the group around the same time as Avunit and became one of its core members.
Associates and former members include:
- M_nerva – M_nerva, once a member of the group, leaked some of the group's chat logs to The Guardian. In response to the leak, LulzSec published M_nerva's personal information and records of the illegal hacking activity performed with them. May also have participated with LulzSec in the attack on Fox.com.
- Joepie91 – Though he is one of the most frequent participants in LulzSec IRC chat logs, the group stated that he is not a core member..
- Neuron – Neuron is not a core member of the group, but may have supported them by building software and taking part in some of their distributed denial-of-service attacks. He is thought to be an engineering student in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. - Ryan Cleary – A 19-year-old from EssexEssexEssex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
, United KingdomUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
who was arrested by Metropolitan PoliceMetropolitan policeMetropolitan Police is a generic title for the municipal police force for a major metropolitan area, and it may be part of the official title of the force...
on 21 June 2011 and charged with violating the Computer Misuse ActComputer Misuse Act 1990The Computer Misuse Act 1990 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, introduced partly in response to the decision in R v Gold & Schifreen 1 AC 1063 . Critics of the bill complained that it was introduced hastily and was poorly thought out...
and the Criminal Law Act 1977Criminal Law Act 1977The Criminal Law Act 1977 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Most of it only applies to England and Wales. It is mainly significant because it defines the offence of conspiracy in English law...
. Though not a member of the group, LulzSec admitted that he did run one of the IRC channels that they used for communicating.
Ideology
LulzSec does not appear to hack for financial profit. The group's claimed main motivation is to have fun by causing mayhem. They do things "for the lulz" and focus on the possible comedic and entertainment value of attacking targets. The group occasionally has claimed a political message. When they hacked PBSPublic Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
, they stated they did so in retaliation for what they perceived as unfair treatment of Wikileaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
in a Frontline documentary entitled WikiSecrets. A page they inserted to the PBS website included the title "FREE BRADLEY MANNING. FUCK FRONTLINE!" The 20 June announcement of "Operation Anti-Security" contained justification for attacks on government targets, citing supposed government efforts to "dominate and control our Internet ocean" and accusing them of corruption and breaching privacy. The media has most often described them as grey hat hackers.
Karim Hijazi, CEO of security company Unveillance, has accused the group of blackmailing
Extortion
Extortion is a criminal offence which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion. Refraining from doing harm is sometimes euphemistically called protection. Extortion is commonly practiced by organized crime...
him by offering not to attack his company or its affiliates in exchange for money. LulzSec responded by claiming that Hijazi offered to pay them to attack his business opponents and that they never intended to take any money from him. LulzSec has denied responsibility for misuse of any of the data they breach and release. Instead, they place the blame on users who reuse passwords on multiple websites and on companies with inadequate security in place.
In June 2011, the group released a manifesto outlining why they perform hacks and website takedowns. In it they reiterated that "we do things just because we find it entertaining" and that watching the results can be "priceless". However, they also claim to be drawing attention to computer security
Computer security
Computer security is a branch of computer technology known as information security as applied to computers and networks. The objective of computer security includes protection of information and property from theft, corruption, or natural disaster, while allowing the information and property to...
flaws and holes. They contend that many other hackers exploit and steal user information without releasing the names publicly or telling people they may possibly have been hacked. LulzSec said that by releasing lists of hacked usernames or informing the public of vulnerable websites, it gives users the opportunity to change names and passwords elsewhere that might otherwise have been exploited, and businesses will be alarmed that they should upgrade their security.
The group's latest attacks have had a more political tone. They claim to want to expose the "racist and corrupt nature" of the military and law enforcement
Law enforcement
Law enforcement broadly refers to any system by which some members of society act in an organized manner to promote adherence to the law by discovering and punishing persons who violate the rules and norms governing that society...
. They have also expressed opposition to the War on Drugs
War on Drugs
The War on Drugs is a campaign of prohibition and foreign military aid and military intervention being undertaken by the United States government, with the assistance of participating countries, intended to both define and reduce the illegal drug trade...
. Lulzsec's Operation Anti-Security has been characterized as a protest against government censorship and monitoring of the internet. In a question and answer session with BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
Newsnight
Newsnight
Newsnight is a BBC Television current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians. Jeremy Paxman has been its main presenter for over two decades....
, LulzSec member Whirlpool said, "Politically motivated ethical hacking is more fulfilling". He claimed the loosening of copyright laws and the rollback of what he sees as corrupt racial profiling
Racial profiling
Racial profiling refers to the use of an individual’s race or ethnicity by law enforcement personnel as a key factor in deciding whether to engage in enforcement...
practices as some of the group's issues.
Initial targets
The group's first attacks came in May 2011. Their first recorded target was Fox.com, which they retaliated against after they called Common, a rapper and entertainer, "vile" on the Fox News ChannelFox News Channel
Fox News Channel , often called Fox News, is a cable and satellite television news channel owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, a subsidiary of News Corporation...
. They leaked several passwords, LinkedIn profiles, and the names of 73,000 X Factor contestants. Soon after on 15 May, they released the transaction logs of 3,100 Automated Teller Machine
Automated teller machine
An automated teller machine or automatic teller machine, also known as a Cashpoint , cash machine or sometimes a hole in the wall in British English, is a computerised telecommunications device that provides the clients of a financial institution with access to financial transactions in a public...
s in the United Kingdom. In May 2011, members of Lulz Security gained international attention for hacking into the American Public Broadcasting System (PBS) website. They stole user data and posted a fake story on the site which claimed that Tupac Shakur
Tupac Shakur
Tupac Amaru Shakur , known by his stage names 2Pac and Makaveli, was an American rapper and actor. Shakur has sold over 75 million albums worldwide as of 2007, making him one of the best-selling music artists in the world...
and Biggie Smalls were still alive and living in New Zealand. In the aftermath of the attack, CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
referred to the responsible group as the "Lulz Boat".
Lulz Security claimed that some of its hacks, including its attack on PBS, were motivated by a desire to defend WikiLeaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
and Bradley Manning. A Fox News report on the group quoted one commentator, Brandon Pike, who claimed that Lulz Security is affiliated with the hacktivist
Hacktivism
Hacktivism is the use of computers and computer networks as a means of protest to promote political ends. The term was first coined in 1994 by a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective named Omega...
group Anonymous
Anonymous (group)
Anonymous is an international hacking group, spread through the Internet, initiating active civil disobedience, while attempting to maintain anonymity. Originating in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, the term refers to the concept of many online community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic,...
. Lulz Security claimed that Pike had actually hired it to hack PBS. Pike denied the accusation and claims it was leveled against him because he said Lulz Security was a splinter of Anonymous.
In June 2011, members of the group claimed responsibility for an attack against Sony Pictures that took data that included "names, passwords, e-mail addresses, home addresses and dates of birth for thousands of people." The group claimed that it used a SQL injection attack, and was motivated by Sony's legal action against George Hotz
George Hotz
George Francis Hotz , alias geohot, million75 or simply mil, is an American hacker known for unlocking the iPhone, allowing the phone to be used with other wireless carriers, contrary to AT&T and Apple's intent...
for jailbreaking into the PlayStation 3
PlayStation 3
The is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment and the successor to the PlayStation 2 as part of the PlayStation series. The PlayStation 3 competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
. The group claims it will launch an attack that will be the "beginning of the end" for Sony. Some of the compromised user information has since been used in scams. The group claimed to have compromised over 1,000,000 accounts, though Sony claims the real number was around 37,500.
Corporate attacks
Lulz Security attempted to hack into NintendoNintendo
is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
, but both the group and Nintendo itself report that no particularly valuable information was found by the hackers. LulzSec claims that it did not mean to harm Nintendo, declaring: "We're not targeting Nintendo. We like the N64
Nintendo 64
The , often referred to as N64, was Nintendo′s third home video game console for the international market. Named for its 64-bit CPU, it was released in June 1996 in Japan, September 1996 in North America, March 1997 in Europe and Australia, September 1997 in France and December 1997 in Brazil...
too much — we sincerely hope Nintendo plugs the gap."
On 8 June 2011, LulzSec hacked into the website of Black & Berg Cybersecurity Consulting, a small network security company, and changed the image displayed on their front page to one containing the LulzSec logo. They did so after the company had issued a "Cybersecurity For The 21st Century, Hacking Challenge", in which they challenged hackers to hack the site and alter the homepage graphic. The intrusion came after Joe Black, an owner of the company posted the message "Black & Berg Cybersecurity Consulting appreciate all the hard work that you're putting in. Your Hacking = Clients for us. Thx" to the LulzSec Twitter account. Though Black & Berg offered a prize of $10,000 and a position with the company for the successful hack, members of LulzSec declined the offer. Instead, the website contained the reply "DONE, THAT WAS EASY. KEEP THE MONEY, WE DO IT FOR THE LULZ".
On 11 June, reports emerged that LulzSec reportedly hacked into and stole user information from the pornography website
Internet pornography
Internet pornography is pornography that is distributed by means of various sectors of the Internet, primarily via websites, peer-to-peer file sharing, or Usenet newsgroups...
www.pron.com. They obtained and published around 26,000 e-mail addresses and passwords. Among the information stolen are records of two users who subscribed using email addresses associated with the Malaysian government, three users who subscribed using United States military email addresses and 55 users who LulzSec claimed were administrators of other adult-oriented websites. Following the breach, Facebook locked the accounts of all users who had used the published e-mail addresses, and also blocked new Facebook accounts opened using the leaked e-mail addresses. They feared that users of the site would get hacked after LulzSec encouraged people to try and see if these people used identical user name and password combinations on Facebook as well.
LulzSec hacked into the Bethesda Game Studios network and posted information taken from the network onto the Internet, though they refrained from publishing 200,000 compromised accounts. LulzSec posted the following message to Twitter regarding the attack, "Bethesda, we broke into your site over two months ago. We've had all of your Brink users for weeks, Please fix your junk, thanks!"
On 14 June, LulzSec took down four websites by request of fans as part of their "Titanic Take-down Tuesday". These websites were Minecraft
Minecraft
Minecraft is a sandbox-building independent video game written in Java originally by Swedish creator Markus "Notch" Persson and now by his company, Mojang, formed from the proceeds of the game. It was released as an alpha on May 17, 2009, with a beta version on December 20, 2010...
, League of Legends
League of Legends
The BetFred League of Legends was a darts tournament featuring some of the legends of the game of darts which commenced in May 2008. The tournament is broadcast on Setanta Sports in the United Kingdom....
, The Escapist
The Escapist (magazine)
The Escapist is an online magazine covering video games, gamers, the gaming industry, and gaming culture. Published by the Themis Group, it was edited by Julianne Greer up to June 30, 2009, then by Russ Pitts through September 2011, and is currently edited by Steve Butts. The Escapist was first...
, and IT security company FinFisher. They also attacked the login servers of the massively multiplayer online game EVE Online
EVE Online
Eve Online is a video game by CCP Games. It is a player-driven, persistent-world MMORPG set in a science fiction space setting. Characters pilot customizable ships through a galaxy of over 7,500 star systems. Most star systems are connected to one or more other star systems by means of stargates...
, which also disabled the game's front-facing website, and the League of Legends login servers. Most of the takedowns were performed with distributed denial-of-service attacks. On 15 June, LulzSec took down the main server of S2 Games' Heroes of Newerth
Heroes of Newerth
Heroes of Newerth is a free-to-play science fantasy, action real-time strategy game developed by S2 Games for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The game was heavily inspired by the Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne custom map, Defense of the Ancients and is S2 Games' first game title in the...
as another phone request. They claimed, "Heroes of Newerth master login server is down. They need some treatment. Also, DotA
Defense of the Ancients
Defense of the Ancients is a custom scenario for the real-time strategy game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, based on the "Aeon of Strife" map for StarCraft...
is better."
On 16 June, LulzSec posted a random assortment of 62,000 emails and passwords to MediaFire
MediaFire
MediaFire is a free file and image hosting web site that started in 2006 and is located in Harris County, Texas, United States. The domain mediafire.com attracted almost 60 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study.- Features :...
. LulzSec states they released this in return for supporters flooding the 4chan
4chan
4chan is an English-language imageboard website. Launched on October 1, 2003, its boards were originally used for the posting of pictures and discussion of manga and anime...
/b/ board. The group did not say what websites the combinations were for and encouraged followers to plug them into various sites until they gained access to an account. Some have reported gaining access to Facebook accounts and changing images to sexual content and others to using the Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
accounts of others to purchase several books. Writerspace.com, a literary website, later admitted that the addresses and passwords came from users of their site.
Government-focused activities
LulzSec claims to have hacked local InfraGardInfraGard
InfraGard is a private non-profit organization serving as a public-private partnership between U.S. businesses and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The organization describes itself as an information sharing and analysis effort serving the interests and combining the knowledge base of a wide...
chapter sites, a non-profit organization affiliated with the FBI. The group leaked some of InfraGard member e-mails and a database of local users. The group defaced the website posting the following message, "LET IT FLOW YOU STUPID FBI BATTLESHIPS," accompanied with a video. LulzSec has posted the following message regarding the attack:
On 9 June, LulzSec sent an email to the administrators of the British National Health Service
National Health Service
The National Health Service is the shared name of three of the four publicly funded healthcare systems in the United Kingdom. They provide a comprehensive range of health services, the vast majority of which are free at the point of use to residents of the United Kingdom...
, informing them of a security vulnerability discovered in NHS systems. LulzSec stated that they did not intend to exploit this vulnerability, saying in the email that "We mean you no harm and only want to help you fix your tech issues."
On 13 June, LulzSec released the e-mails and passwords of a number of users of senate.gov, the website of the United States Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
. The information released also included the root directory
Root directory
In computer file systems, the root directory is the first or top-most directory in a hierarchy. It can be likened to the root of a tree — the starting point where all branches originate.-Metaphor:...
of parts of the website. LulzSec stated, "This is a small, just-for-kicks release of some internal data from senate.gov — is this an act of war, gentlemen? Problem?" referencing a recent statement by the Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
that some cyberattacks could be considered an act of war
Casus belli
is a Latin expression meaning the justification for acts of war. means "incident", "rupture" or indeed "case", while means bellic...
. No highly sensitive information appears in the release.
On 15 June, LulzSec launched an attack on www.cia.gov, the public website of the United States Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
, taking the website offline with a distributed denial-of-service attack. The website was down from 5:48 pm to 8:00 pm eastern time.
Operation Anti-Security
On 20 June, the group announced it had teamed up with Anonymous for "Operation Anti-Security". They encouraged supporters to hack into, steal, and publish classified government information from any source while leaving the term "Antisec" as evidence of their intrusion. Also listed as potential targets were major banks. USA TodayUSA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
characterized the operation as an open declaration of cyberwarfare against big government and corporations. Their first target of the operation was the Serious Organised Crime Agency
Serious Organised Crime Agency
The Serious Organised Crime Agency is a non-departmental public body of the Government of the United Kingdom under Home Office sponsorship...
(SOCA), a national law enforcement agency
Law enforcement agency
In North American English, a law enforcement agency is a government agency responsible for the enforcement of the laws.Outside North America, such organizations are called police services. In North America, some of these services are called police while others have other names In North American...
of the United Kingdom. LulzSec claimed to have taken the website offline at about 11 am EST on 20 June 2011, though it only remained down for a few minutes. While the attack appeared to be a DDoS attack, LulzSec tweeted that actual hacking was taking place "behind the scenes". At about 6:10 pm EST on 20 June, SOCA's website went down yet again. SOCA's website was back online sometime between 20 and 21 June. The website of the local district government of Jianhua District
Jianhua District
Jianhua District is a district of the city of Qiqihar, Heilongjiang province, People's Republic of China.The area of the district is 81 square km, and holds a population of 220,000.-External links:*...
in Qiqihar
Qiqihar
- Subdivisions :Qiqihar is divided into 16 divisions: 7 districts , 8 counties and 1 county-level city .-Economy:...
, China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
, was also knocked offline. Early in the morning on 22 June, it was revealed that LulzSec's "Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian unit" had taken down two Brazilian government websites, brasil.gov.br and presidencia.gov.br. They also brought down the website of Brazilian energy company Petrobras
Petrobras
Petróleo Brasileiro or Petrobras is a semi-public Brazilian multinational energy corporation headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is the largest company in Latin America by market capitalization and revenue, and the largest company headquartered in the Southern Hemisphere by market...
.
On 20 June, two members on the "Lulz Boat" reportedly leaked logs that LulzSec was going to leak on 21 June. They also claimed that the two had leaked information that aided authorities in locating and arresting Ryan Cleary, a man loosely affiliated with the group. LulzSec posted various personal information about the two on Pastebin
Pastebin
A pastebin is a type of web application that allows its users to upload snippets of text, usually samples of source code, for public viewing. It is very popular in IRC channels where pasting large amounts of text is considered bad etiquette. A new trend is that users use Pastebin to post Twitter...
including IP address
IP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...
es and physical addresses. Both had been involved with cyber-crimes in the past, and one had been involved with hacking the game Deus Ex
Deus Ex
Deus Ex is an action role-playing game developed by Ion Storm Inc. and published by Eidos Interactive in 2000, which combines gameplay elements of first-person shooters with those of role-playing video games...
.
After LulzSec encouragement, some began tagging public locations with physical graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
reading "Antisec" as part of the operation. Numerous beachfronts in Mission Beach, San Diego were vandalized with the phrase. Some local news organizations mistook the graffiti in Mission Beach as signs of the Antisec Movement
Antisec Movement
The Anti Security Movement is a movement opposed to the computer security industry. Antisec is against full disclosure of information relating to but not limited to: software vulnerabilities, exploits, exploitation techniques, hacking tools, attacking public outlets and distribution points of that...
. Many commenters on the local news websites corrected this.
On 23 June, LulzSec released a number of documents pertaining to the Arizona Department of Public Safety
Arizona Department of Public Safety
Arizona Department of Public Safety is a law enforcement agency with its usual focus being protection of all Arizona highways. The current Director is Robert C. Halliday, a previously retired DPS commander, who began his 5-year term in February 2010...
, which they titled "chinga la migra", which roughly translates to "fuck the border patrol". The leaked items included email addresses and passwords, as well as hundreds of documents marked "sensitive" or "for official use only". LulzSec claimed that this was in protest of the law passed in Arizona requiring some aliens to carry registration documents at all times. Arizona officials have confirmed the intrusion. Arizona police have complained that the release of officer identities and the method used to combat gangs could endanger the lives of police officers.
On 24 June 2011, LulzSecBrazil published what they claimed were access codes and passwords that they used to access the Petrobras website and employee profile data they had taken using the information. Petrobras denied that any data had been stolen, and LulzSecBrazil removed the information from their Twitter feed a few hours later. The group also released personal information regarding President of Brazil
President of Brazil
The president of Brazil is both the head of state and head of government of the Federative Republic of Brazil. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the Brazilian Armed Forces...
Dilma Rousseff
Dilma Rousseff
Dilma Vana Rousseff is the 36th and current President of Brazil. She is the first woman to hold the office. Prior to that, in 2005, she was also the first woman to become Chief of Staff of Brazil, appointed by then President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva....
and Mayor of São Paulo Gilberto Kassab
Gilberto Kassab
Gilberto Kassab is a Brazilian politician, current mayor of São Paulo. His term ends in 2012. A civil engineer and economist, of Lebanese descent, Kassab took over from José Serra, after Serra decided to run for governor of São Paulo...
.
On 25 June 2011, LulzSec released what they described as their last data dump. The release contained an enormous amount of information from various sources. The files contained a half gigabyte
Gigabyte
The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is...
of internal information from telecommunication company AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
, including information relating to its release of 4G
4G
In telecommunications, 4G is the fourth generation of cellular wireless standards. It is a successor to the 3G and 2G families of standards. In 2009, the ITU-R organization specified the IMT-Advanced requirements for 4G standards, setting peak speed requirements for 4G service at 100 Mbit/s...
LTE and details pertaining to over 90,000 personal phones used by IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
. The IP address
IP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...
es of several large corporations including Sony, Viacom
Viacom
Viacom Inc. , short for "Video & Audio Communications", is an American media conglomerate with interests primarily in, but not limited to, cinema and cable television...
, and Disney, EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
, and NBC Universal
NBC Universal
NBCUniversal Media, LLC is a media and entertainment company engaged in the production and marketing of entertainment, news, and information products and services to a global customer base...
were included. It also contained over 750,000 username and password combinations from several websites, including 200,000 email addresses, usernames, and encrypted passwords from hackforums.net; 12,000 names, usernames, and passwords of the NATO online bookshop; half a million usernames and encrypted passwords of players of the online game Battlefield Heroes
Battlefield Heroes
Battlefield Heroes is a cartoon-style action video game developed by DICE initially—now developed by —and published by EA for Microsoft Windows. It is played from a third-person EA are calling it FPS perspective. The game is less demanding on computer specifications than the previous games of the...
; 50,000 usernames, email addresses, and encrypted passwords of various video game forum users; and 29 users of Priority Investigations, an Irish private investigation
Private investigator
A private investigator , private detective or inquiry agent, is a person who can be hired by individuals or groups to undertake investigatory law services. Private detectives/investigators often work for attorneys in civil cases. Many work for insurance companies to investigate suspicious claims...
company. Also included were an internal manual for AOL
AOL
AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...
engineering staff and a screencapture of a vandalized page from navy.mil, the website of the United States Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
. Members of the group continued the operation with members of Anonymous after disbanding.
Despite claiming to have retired, on 18 July LulzSec hacked into the website of British newspaper The Sun. The group redirected the newspaper's website to an also-hacked redesign website of another newspaper The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, altering the site to resemble The Sun and posting a fake story claiming that Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
had died after ingesting a fatal dose of palladium
Palladium
Palladium is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pd and an atomic number of 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was itself named after the epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, acquired...
. They objected to the involvement of News Corporation
News Corporation
News Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...
, the Murdoch-owned company that publishes The Sun and The Times, in a large phone hacking scandal. The hacked website also contained a webcomic depicting LulzSec deciding on and carrying out the attack. The group later redirected The Sun website to their Twitter feed. News International released a statement regarding the attacks before having the page the statement appeared on also redirected to the LulzSec Twitter page and eventually taken offline. The group also released the names and phone numbers of a reporter for The Sun and two others associated with the newspaper and encouraged their supporters to call them. They further included an old email address and password of former News International executive Rebekah Brooks. News Corporation took the websites offline as a precaution later in the day.
Denied attacks
The media reported a number of attacks, originally attributed to LulzSec, that the group later denied involvement in. On 21 June, someone claiming to be from the group posted on Pastebin that they had stolen the entire database of the United Kingdom Census 2011United Kingdom Census 2011
The most recent census of the United Kingdom, known as the 2011 census, took place on 27 March 2011, a decade after the previous census. It was conducted on the same day in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to ensure coherence and consistency...
. LulzSec responded by saying that they had obtained no such data and that whoever posted the notice was not from the group. British officials say that they are investigating the incident but have found no evidence that any databases had been compromised or any information taken. The British government, upon concluding their investigation, called the claims that any information on the census was taken a hoax
Hoax
A hoax is a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment, or rumors, urban legends, pseudosciences or April Fools' Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes.-Definition:The British...
.
In June 2011, assets belonging to newspaper publisher News International
News International
News International Ltd is the United Kingdom newspaper publishing division of News Corporation. Until June 2002, it was called News International plc....
were attacked, apparently in retaliation for reporting by The Sun of the arrest of Ryan Cleary, an associate of the group. The newspaper's website and a computer used in the publishing process of The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
were attacked. However LulzSec denied any involvement, stating "we didn't attack The Sun or The Times in any way with any kind of DDoS attack".
Hacker actions against LulzSec
A number of different hackers have targeted LulzSec and its members in response to their activities. On 23 June 2011, Fox News reported that rival hacker group TeaMp0isoNTeaMp0isoN
TeaMp0isoN is a group of Black-Hat computer hackers established in mid-2009. TeaMp0isoN has ten core members, as stated within their web-based zine; "TriCk", is the leader of TeaMp0isoN, and the other core members are "iN^SaNe", "Hex00010", "MLT", "Phantom~", "aXioM", "d0ped", "C0RPS3",...
were responsible for outing web designer and alleged LulzSec member Sven Slootweg, who they said used the online nickname Joepie91, and that they have intentions to do the same with every member. The group has expressed being motivated by what they perceive as LulzSec's low hacking abilities, bringing them media attention they do not deserve. One member of the group, Hex0010, proclaimed "We're here to show the world that they're nothing but a bunch of script kiddies. You think, 'I'm a bad-ass hacker because I can knock someone offline for a few minutes.' That's bullshit. Come on."
A group calling themselves Team Web Ninjas appeared in June 2011 saying they were angry over LulzSec release of the e-mail addresses and passwords of thousands of normal Internet users. They have attempted to publicly identify the online and real world identities of LulzSec leadership and claim to do so on behalf of the group's victims. The group has claimed to have identified and given to law enforcement the names of a number of the group's members, including someone they claim is a United States Marine.
The Jester
The Jester (hacktivist)
The Jester is a computer vigilante who describes himself as gray hat "hacktivist." He or she claims to be responsible for attacks on WikiLeaks, 4chan, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Islamist websites. He claims to be acting out of American patriotism...
, a hacker who generally goes by the leetspeak handle th3j35t3r, has vowed to find and expose members of LulzSec. Claiming to perform hacks out of a sense of American patriotism, he has attempted to obtain and publish the real world personally identifiable information
Personally identifiable information
Personally Identifiable Information , as used in information security, is information that can be used to uniquely identify, contact, or locate a single person or can be used with other sources to uniquely identify a single individual...
of key members, whom he describes as "childish". On 24 June 2011, he claimed to have revealed the identity of LulzSec leader Sabu as an information technology consultant
Information technology consulting
Information technology consulting is a field that focuses on advising businesses on how best to use information technology to meet their business objectives...
possibly from New York City. On 24 June 2011, a hacker allegedly going by the name Oneiroi briefly took down the LulzSec website in what he labelled "Operation Supernova". The Twitter page for the group also briefly became unavailable.
On 24 June 2011, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
published leaked logs from one of the group's IRC channels. The logs were supposedly leaked by a disgruntled former member of the group who goes by the nickname m_nerva. After confirming that these leaked logs were indeed theirs, and that the logs revealed personal information on two members who had recently left the group due to the implications of attacking the FBI website, LulzSec went on to threaten m_nerva on their Twitter feed. LulzSec claimed that the logs were not from one of their core chatting channels, but rather a secondary channel used to screen potential backups and gather research.
A short time before LulzSec claimed to be disbanding, a group calling itself the A-Team posted what they claimed was a full list of LulzSec members online along with numerous chat logs of the group communicating with each other. A rival hacker going by the name of TriCk also claimed to be working to reveal the group's identities and claimed that efforts on the part of rival hackers had pushed the group to disband for fear of being caught.
Law enforcement response
On 21 June 2011, the Metropolitan PoliceMetropolitan police
Metropolitan Police is a generic title for the municipal police force for a major metropolitan area, and it may be part of the official title of the force...
announced that they had arrested a 19 year old man from Wickford
Wickford
Wickford is a town in the south of the English county of Essex, with a population of more than 32,500. Located approximately 30 miles east of London, it falls within the District of Basildon along with Basildon, Billericay, Laindon and Pitsea....
, Essex, named by LulzSec and locally as Ryan Cleary, as part of an operation carried out in cooperation with the FBI. The suspect was arrested on charges of computer misuse
Computer Misuse Act 1990
The Computer Misuse Act 1990 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, introduced partly in response to the decision in R v Gold & Schifreen 1 AC 1063 . Critics of the bill complained that it was introduced hastily and was poorly thought out...
and fraud
Fraud
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation...
, and later charged with five counts of computer hacking under the Criminal Law Act
Criminal Law Act 1977
The Criminal Law Act 1977 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Most of it only applies to England and Wales. It is mainly significant because it defines the offence of conspiracy in English law...
and the Computer Misuse Act. News reports described him as an alleged member of LulzSec. LulzSec have since denied the man arrested was a member. A member of LulzSec claimed that the suspect was not part of the group, but did host one of its IRC channels on his server. British police representatives have confirmed that he is being questioned regarding alleged involvement in LulzSec attacks against the Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) and other targets. They also questioned him regarding an attack on the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry in November 2010. On 25 June 2011 the court released Cleary under the bail conditions that he did not leave his house without his mother and did not use any device connected to the internet. He had been diagnosed the previous week with Asperger syndrome
Asperger syndrome
Asperger's syndrome that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, alongside restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. It differs from other autism spectrum disorders by its relative preservation of linguistic and cognitive development...
.
At around the same time as Cleary's arrest, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
agents raided the Reston, Virginia
Reston, Virginia
Reston is a census-designated place in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States, within the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The population was 58,404, at the 2010 Census and 56,407 at the 2000 census...
facility of Swiss
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
web hosting service
Web hosting service
A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own or lease for use by their clients as well as providing Internet...
DigitalOne. The raid took several legitimate websites offline for hours as the agency looked for information on an undisclosed target. Media reports have speculated that the raid may have been related to the LulzSec investigation.
After LulzSec hacked into Arizona Department of Public Safety databases, law enforcement activated the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center. All Department of Public Safety employees had remote access
Remote access
In telecommunication, the term remote access has the following meanings:#Pertaining to communication with a data processing facility from a remote location or facility through a data link...
of their email accounts suspended. Officers that had their personal information and that of their families released publicly were given additional protection. They further reiterated that, despite having disbanded, members of LulzSec were still being pursued for criminal prosecution.
A few days before LulzSec disbanded, the FBI executed a search warrant
Search warrant
A search warrant is a court order issued by a Magistrate, judge or Supreme Court Official that authorizes law enforcement officers to conduct a search of a person or location for evidence of a crime and to confiscate evidence if it is found....
on an Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...
home rented by Laurelai Bailey. Authorities interviewed her for five hours and confiscated her hard drives, camera, and other electronic equipment, but no charges were filed. Bailey denied being a member of the group, but did admit to chatting with members of LulzSec online and later leaking those chats. They were interested in having her infiltrate the group, but Bailey claimed that the members hated her and would never let her in. The questioning by the FBI led a local technical support
Technical support
Technical support or tech support refers to a range of services by which enterprises provide assistance to users of technology products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods...
company to fire Laurelai, claiming that she had embarrassed the company.
On 27 June 2011, the FBI executed another search warrant in Hamilton, Ohio
Hamilton, Ohio
Hamilton is a city in Butler County, southwestern Ohio, United States. The population was 62,447 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Butler County. The city is part of the Cincinnati metropolitan area....
. The local media connected the raid to the LulzSec investigation; however, the warrant is sealed, the name of the target was not revealed, and the FBI office in Cincinnati refused to comment on any possible connection between the group and the raid. No one in the residence was charged with a crime after the FBI served the warrant. Some reports suggested the house may belong to former LulzSec member m_nerva, who leaked a number of the group's logs to the press, and information leading to the warrant supplied by Ryan Cleary.
On 19 July 2011, the London Metropolitan Police announced the arrest of LulzSec member Tflow. A 16 year-old male was arrested in South London on charges of violating the Computer Misuse Act as part of an operation involving the arrest of several other hackers affiliated with Anonymous in the United States and United Kingdom. LulzSec once again denied that any of their membership had been arrested, stating "there are six of us, and we're all still here."
On the same day, the FBI arrested 21-year-old Lance Moore in Las Cruces, New Mexico
Las Cruces, New Mexico
Las Cruces, also known as "The City of the Crosses", is the county seat of Doña Ana County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 97,618 in 2010 according to the 2010 Census, making it the second largest city in the state....
. He was accused of stealing thousands of documents and applications from AT&T that LulzSec published as part of their so called "final release". The FBI also arrested Scott Arciszewski, a 21-year old University of Central Florida
University of Central Florida
The University of Central Florida, commonly referred to as UCF, is a metropolitan public research university located in Orlando, Florida, United States...
student. The criminal complaint against him claims that he hacked into and uploaded malicious files to the InfraGard website; he then informed LulzSec of the vulnerabilities he had inserted, allowing them to hack into the website as well.
The Police Central E-Crime Unit
Police National E-Crime Unit
The Police National E-Crime Unit is a part of the Specialist Crime Directorate of the Metropolitan Police Service in London, dedicated to combating e-crime in England, Wales and Northern Ireland...
arrested an 18-year-old man from Shetland on 27 July 2011 suspected of being LulzSec member Topiary
Topiary (hacktivist)
Topiary is a hacktivist and self-described "Supporter of Anonymous Operations, WikiLeaks, and maintaining freedom on the Internet". He is heavily involved with the Internet group Anonymous, which have publicly claimed various online attacks, including hacking HBGary, Westboro Baptist Church, and...
. They also searched the house of and interviewed a 17-year-old from Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...
possibly connected to the investigation. Scotland Yard later identified the man arrested as Yell, Shetland resident Jake Davis. He was charged with unauthorized access of a computer under the Computer Misuse Act 1990
Computer Misuse Act 1990
The Computer Misuse Act 1990 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, introduced partly in response to the decision in R v Gold & Schifreen 1 AC 1063 . Critics of the bill complained that it was introduced hastily and was poorly thought out...
, encouraging or assisting criminal activity under the Serious Crime Act 2007
Serious Crime Act 2007
The Serious Crime Act 2007 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that makes several radical changes to English criminal law. In particular, it creates a new scheme of serious crime prevention orders to frustrate crime in England and Wales and in Northern Ireland, replaces the common law...
, conspiracy to launch a denial-of-service attack against the Serious Organised Crime Unit contrary to the Criminal Law Act 1977
Criminal Law Act 1977
The Criminal Law Act 1977 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Most of it only applies to England and Wales. It is mainly significant because it defines the offence of conspiracy in English law...
, and criminal conspiracy also under the Criminal Law Act 1977. Police confiscated a Dell
Dell
Dell, Inc. is an American multinational information technology corporation based in 1 Dell Way, Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells and supports computers and related products and services. Bearing the name of its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest...
laptop and a 100-gigabyte hard drive that ran 16 different virtual machine
Virtual machine
A virtual machine is a "completely isolated guest operating system installation within a normal host operating system". Modern virtual machines are implemented with either software emulation or hardware virtualization or both together.-VM Definitions:A virtual machine is a software...
s. Details relating to an attack on Sony and hundreds of thousands of email addresses and passwords were found on the computer. A London court released Davis on bail under the conditions that he live under curfew with his parents and have no access to the internet. His lawyer Gideon Cammerman stated that, while his client did help publicize LulzSec and Anonymous attacks, he lacks the technical skills to have been anything but a sympathizer.
In early September 2011, Scotland Yard made two further arrests relating to LulzSec. Police arrested a 24-year-old male in Mexborough
Mexborough
Mexborough is a town in the metropolitan borough of Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England, situated on the north bank of the River Don west of its confluence with the River Dearne...
, South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire is a metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It has a population of 1.29 million. It consists of four metropolitan boroughs: Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, and City of Sheffield...
and a 20-year-old male in Warminster
Warminster
Warminster is a town in western Wiltshire, England, by-passed by the A36, and near Frome and Westbury. It has a population of about 17,000. The River Were runs through the town and can be seen running through the middle of the town park. The Minster Church of St Denys sits on the River Were...
, Wiltshire
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
. The two are accused of conspiring to commit offenses under the Computer Misuse Act of 1990; police said that the arrests related to investigations into LulzSec member Kayla.
On 22 September 2011, the FBI arrested Cody Kretsinger, a 23-year-old from Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...
who has been indicted on charges of conspiracy and the unauthorized impairment of a protected computer. He is suspected of using the name recursion and assisting LulzSec in their early hack against Sony Pictures Entertainment, though he allegedly erased the hard drives he used to carry out the attack. Kretsinger was released on his own recognizance under the conditions that he not access the internet except while at work and that he not travel to any states other than Arizona, California, or Illinois. The case against him was filed in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, where Sony Pictures is located.
See also
- Operation PaybackOperation PaybackOperation Payback is a coordinated, decentralized group of attacks on opponents of Internet piracy by Internet activists using the "Anonymous" moniker - a group sometimes affiliated with the website 4chan. Operation Payback started as retaliation to distributed denial of service attacks on torrent...
- HacktivismHacktivismHacktivism is the use of computers and computer networks as a means of protest to promote political ends. The term was first coined in 1994 by a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective named Omega...
- PlayStation Network outagePlayStation Network outageThe PlayStation Network outage was the result of an "external intrusion" on Sony's PlayStation Network and Qriocity services, in which personal details from approximately 77 million accounts were stolen and prevented users of PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable consoles from playing online...
- Operation Anti-Security
External links
- LulzSec at Formspring