A GROUP of hackers claiming to have attacked websites globally, including Britain’s Serious and Organised Crime Agency and the US Senate, has disbanded, according to a post on its website.
LulzSec, made up of six hackers, said it was disbanding after 50 days “disrupting and exposing corporations, governments, often the general population itself, and quite possibly everything in between, just because we could”. “Lulz” is online slang for laughs.
As a parting shot, the group released a broad mixture of data apparently hacked from sources as diverse as computer games companies, a private investigator, the Nato bookshop and the internet giant AOL.
The largest group of documents, 338 files, appeared to be internal papers from US telecoms company AT&T, detailing its building of a new wireless broadband network which is set to go live this summer.
LulzSec had previously claimed to have released internal data from Arizona’s department of public safety in protest at its alleged “anti-immigrant” policies, and hacked a website associated with the FBI and another run by the CIA. It also released data from games firms Nintendo and Sony.
The decision to close followed a series of blows, one of which led to of an alleged member arrested and charged in the UK under the Criminal Law Act and Computer Misuse Act by the e-crime unit of the Metropolitan police.
The alleged identities of two others were posted online by a rival hacker, and internal chat-logs between the hackers were leaked, revealing two members had quit because they felt the hacking had gone too far.
LulzSec signed off with an admission that it had been motivated by little more than the pursuit of “the raw, uninterrupted, chaotic thrill of entertainment and anarchy” and the desire to “selflessly entertain others”.
Ryan Cleary (19) from Wickford, Essex, was arrested as part of a Scotland Yard and FBI investigation into LulzSec and charged with hacking the website of the British Serious Organised Crime Agency.
His lawyer told City of Westminster magistrates court that he suffers from a form of autism, along with agoraphobia.
Observers believe LulzSec is an offshoot of Anonymous, a larger, more loosely-organised group that attempts to mobilise hackers for attacks on targets it considers immoral, such as oppressive Middle Eastern governments and opponents of WikiLeaks. – (Guardian service)