Several high profile members of the LulzSec hacking collective have been arrested this morning, in several raids which took place on two continents. The group’s infamous leader, ‘Sabu’, has been helping law enforcement agencies bring down the group, acting as a cooperating witness.
We’ve not heard a great deal from the LulzSec group in a while, who after claiming responsibility for high profile hacking attacks on companies such as The Sun, Apple and Fox News, went rather quiet. It has now come to light that the group’s leader ‘Sabu’ was arrested in June of last year, and has since been working with the FBI to help them unmask other members of the group.
Sabu has been revealed as one Hector Xavier Monsegur, a 28 year old unemployed father of two, who resides in New York. Fox News was told by a source close to Monsegur himself that he was “secretly arrested” by the FBI last June, and “now works for them [the FBI]”. He pleaded guilty to 12 charges relating to hacking and cybercrime in August of 2011.
As a result of his help, law enforcement agencies were able to swoop this morning and make arrests on five men who were confirmed to be senior members involved in the LulzSec movement. The men were Ryan “Kayla” Ackroyd and Jake “Topiary” Davies of London, Darren “pwnsauce” Martyn and Donncha “Palladium” O’Cearrbhail of Ireland, and Jeremy “Anarchaos” Hammond of Chicago. The name “Topiary” has appeared before, with many of LulzSec previously believing he had been arrested last year.
All were arrested for being suspected members of LulzSec, responsible for carrying out DDoS attacks and other such cybercrimes on government agencies including the FBI and CIA. Jeremy “Anarchaos” Hammond is suspected to also have been involved in the Anonymous hacking collective, and so will be charged separately to the other four. He is believed to have been behind one particular high profile hack which took place in 2011, where U.S security firm Stratfor was brought to its knees, with credit card details and millions of personal emails stolen and published on Wikileaks.
Ryan “Kayla” Ackroyd is believed to have acted as Sabu’s right-hand man, identifying weaknesses in the U.S Senate’s computer systems for Sabu, who then initiated an attack.
We were always led to believe that there were tens, if not hundreds of people behind LulzSec, but without their leader and most high profile members, will we ever hear from them again?
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Source: Fox News