LulzSec brought down by own leader

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/06/hacking-group-lulzsec-swept-up-by-law-enforcement/

by techinsidr • 14 years ago

198 125 14 years ago

foxnews.com

calibwam• 14 years ago

Working with the FBI for the lulz?

methoddk2• 14 years ago

for the lulz indeed.

What a dick, though..

watty3• 14 years ago

How can anyone with a tiny bit of intelligence claim that he did any wrongdoing by helping the FBI?

This does not imply that helping law enforcement is always ethical. In this case, helping law enforcement take down these criminals is not a "dick move".

ohashi• 14 years ago

I wonder what will happen to Sabu after this?

Karunamon• 14 years ago

Probably lots of phone calls, some random unsolicited pizza appearing on his doorstep, and all kinds of slander on every chan board ever made.

Oh, you mean IRL? Dunno. You'd think they'd have cut him a deal for helping them out.

0x09• 14 years ago

You've got it wrong. Typical chan-goers don't give a shit about Lulzsec and where they do the opinion ranges from tepid to disdain. This is especially true of the one notorious for pizzas and phone calls.

If there's any kind of response to this news it will most likely be mocking.

celticninja• 14 years ago

They will have cut a deal with him already, however that deal usually means reduced jail time in an easy prison, he still has to be charged with the offences. His "good behaviour" is then taken into account by the prosecuting authorities when sentencing him.

They arrest him and publicise his arrest as psyops, any other hackers out there see that the #1 from lulzsec was caught and turned therefore who knows how many lower level hackers have also been turned, thus it increase the paranoia within hacker circles.

Of course this works 2 ways, first off it scares people off from hacking or being involved in it and makes them more likelyo to turn tail and rat out anyone they know who is undertaking nefarious online activity in an effort to protect themselves. The second response is the one they dont like, these groups become more security concious, go deeper underground, become less likely to admit new members, etc. This is counter productinve for the FBi as it makes it more difficult to catch them later down the line.

joeblau• 14 years ago

Movie deal.

mhurron• 14 years ago

What an ass.

watty3• 14 years ago

You're joking right? Sure, he WAS an ass but at least he did some good by helping the FBI take down these criminals - enjoy jail.

knowtheory• 14 years ago

This is a pretty impressive rollup by the Feds.

Seems like an inverted flipping maneuver. Rather than starting with the small fish and cutting deals up to the top, they hit the ostensible mouthpiece/leader and wraps up all of the other folks in the org so that it doesn't splinter off and create successor orgs.

ebbv• 14 years ago

Oh Fox News. Even when reporting on something legitimately interesting and out of the ordinary, they have to use very un-journalistic phrases like "...allegedly commanded a loosely organized, international team of perhaps thousands of hackers..."

"Perhaps thousands"? Perhaps millions! Perhaps five. Ugh.

feralchimp2• 14 years ago

Sex! Drugs? Maybe. Rock and roll? We'll find out!

corford3• 14 years ago

There's a slightly less breathless and more coherent report here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/06/lulzsec-sab...

eli3• 14 years ago

Give credit where its due: Fox News broke this story. The Guardian report appears to be based solely on the earlier Fox story and public documents.

whamill• 14 years ago

They use lots of confusingly contradictory language to puff up the arrest, like: "the head of LulzSec" then immediately following with "the loose network of hackers", and contrasting "loosely organised" with Sabu being at the "nerve centre", and also "perhaps thousands of hackers" whereas they claim to know they're arresting "top-ranking members".

So simultaneously acknowledging they taking out a member of a distributed network but also talking up the importance of that member. Strange.

eli3• 14 years ago

You really don't see how a group could be both "loosely organized" and have yet also have members who act as leaders?

upgrayedd• 14 years ago

So these dox were accurate after all?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2697398

phpnode• 14 years ago

accurate for sabu but not the rest it seems

Indyan• 14 years ago

Sabu was doxed repeatedly, and his family was even the subject of a NYTimes story. http://th3j35t3r.wordpress.com/2011/11/19/if-i-am-wrong-ill-... http://ceaxx.wordpress.com/uncovered/ http://techie-buzz.com/tech-news/fbi-lulzsec-anonymous-sabu....

pimentel• 14 years ago

Having read Kevin Poulsen's 'Kingpin', one could not expect a different result.

kyledrake• 14 years ago

This article claims billions of dollars in damage. If this is what the FBI is saying, they are wrong. Lulzsec damages don't even approach a million dollars, most likely. Billions of dollars is how much money it costs to do things like provide universal health care for a small state. The FBI should investigate real cases and not treat a bunch of merry pranksters like they're a bunch of super terrorists.

watty3• 14 years ago

Review all of the unjustified attacks LulzSec was responsible for: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LulzSec

Easily in the millions.

trotsky3• 14 years ago

Costs in hacking cases are mostly measured by time spent investigating & repairing * fully loaded employee costs. If you have to dump a bunch of servers and reload everything and audit your backups the costs rise very quickly.

jbooth• 14 years ago

Plus, takeout for the guys working the case.

_delirium• 14 years ago

True, but companies on the receiving end often end up also including the cost of things that they would need to do even in a responsible-disclosure scenario. For example, if you discover a major flaw in a company's system that allows high levels of access, and disclose it to them, they'll typically incur considerable costs patching it, rolling out the updates, doing a security audit to make sure it wasn't already quietly discovered earlier by a blackhat who might've backdoored something, etc.

When they do all those same things upon an actual intrusion, they often attribute the expenses to the hacker, but imo they're really attributable to the security flaw, since they'd be incurred even in the whitehat case. I'd only attribute to the hacker the delta between what blackhat disclosure and whitehat disclosure would cost.

numeromancer• 14 years ago

But terrorists are hard to catch, and you have to find them in dirty, unfriendly places.

These guys are relatively easy pickings, and the work is more fun because it's urban.

Ambitious federal agents and prosecutors are much more enticed by the latter.

tlb• 14 years ago

It may include damage to reputation -- Sony could easily claim hundreds of millions there.

piggity• 14 years ago

I didn't realise they had any reputation left to be damaged.

phear• 14 years ago

shocker... but like anonymous/lulzsec continuously said, you cant kill an idea. another group doing it for the lulz perhaps soon or later will come up

lzh-ng• 14 years ago

Of course you can't kill an idea. Wait, what was the idea again?

davidw• 14 years ago

The 21st century equivalent of setting a poop-filled bag on fire on someone's porch, or something along those lines. But without actually requiring anything so taxing as getting up from the computer, going outside, and running.

randallsquared• 14 years ago

you cant kill an idea

Yet no one worships Melqart any longer.

pjscott• 14 years ago

Or, a bit more recently, Catharism was killed very successfully by the Catholic Church and a lot of soldiers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism

You can kill an idea.

tlear2• 14 years ago

We are still in the stage of these groups being very amateurish. It will take few rounds of purges until really committed+careful+smart organizations emerge.

pavel_lishin2• 14 years ago

How do you know they haven't already? Committed+careful+smart probably wouldn't issue press releases.

dualogy• 14 years ago

Ssshh... they're on to us now!

mc32• 14 years ago

For a group, that would take lots of discipline. Not impossible, but not very likely. Even Feds, Chinese and Israeli "teams" suffer unwanted leaks --and these are trained people. People who go thru psychological profiling, shaping, and get reminded by the bureaucracy probably on a frequent basis.

It's hard for me to imagine a loose-knit group being able to pull this disciple off long-term.

redthrowaway2• 14 years ago

Sure they would, they'd just be smarter about it. The point of hacktivism is publicity. If no one knows what you're doing, you're not being particularly effective.

cpeterso• 14 years ago

Just because unlucky/stupid/lazy criminals are getting caught doesn't mean lucky/smart/cautious criminals are not already at work.

InclinedPlane• 14 years ago

This is mistaken.

Committed/careful/smart organizations already exist. But they aren't motivated by publicity and lols. They make serious money through industrial espionage and financial fraud, and they stay as under the radar as possible. Everyone who has a credit or debit card has likely experienced having that information being stolen in one way or another. Those activities aren't just accidents or pranks by bored teens.

Organized crime is well invested in these sorts of things, and for every one incident you hear about there are dozens or hundreds you don't.

tlear2• 14 years ago

Yes they definitely do exist, but I am referring to the ideological types not the straightforward crime for money. Also need to consider the fact that resources brought against Lulsec etc were orders of magnitude more then what normal credit card fraud criminals have to deal with.

jcromartie• 14 years ago

> the unemployed, 28-year-old father of two allegedly commanded a loosely organized, international team of perhaps thousands of hackers

Sounds like he was pretty busy.

gavinlynch5• 14 years ago

When you're unemployed all you have is time. I think he only had partial custody for his kids.

It lets you fit railing against governmental entities and directing 20-somethings--who also don't have full time jobs--seamlessly into your schedule, all with convenience from your government subsidized housing.

mellifluousmind2• 14 years ago

Well, you can pretty much imagine how it went down. FBI caught up to him with threats like "eh..you are unemployed, and you still have two kids. You want to see them in foster care system?" ... well, no surprise there. too many buttons that FBI can push on this guy

SoftwareMaven• 14 years ago

Vapid speculation based on TV plots doesn't really help the level of discourse at HN. Given the list of hacks and the outrageous hacking laws in the US, the default penalty could easily be life in prison. I wouldn't think the Feds would need to push much harder than that.

mellifluousmind2• 14 years ago

Vapid or not, everyone is entitled to their opinions. If you can't accept that, you are not welcome on HN discussion either. End of story.

Simply stated, if HN is heading towards Reddit-like behavior where comments must gear towards "singular" minded thinking, that's the also the day I stop visiting this site.

kiloaper2• 14 years ago

It's not exactly vapid speculation. It's what's been reported by Fox news. I'm not sure how trustworthy their source is but here is the quote:

>“It was because of his kids,” one of the two agents recalled. “He’d do anything for his kids. He didn’t want to go away to prison and leave them. That’s how we got him.”

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/06/exclusive-unmaskin...

wladimir2• 14 years ago

It's strange that it was revealed at all whether he works with the FBI. Is that normal? Why not keep it secret for somewhat longer to catch even more hackers? Exposing him as informant could also bring his life in danger.

This makes me doubt the truth of the story a bit.

dagw• 14 years ago

There is propaganda value in revealing it. I'm guessing they're hoping that members of other groups are going to start asking themselves "if lulzSec was infiltrated by the FBI without anybody noticing, then how can I be sure that they haven't infiltrated my group as well". At the end of the day scaring people into not committing crimes is better for everybody than catching them after the fact.

wladimir2• 14 years ago

Yes, the propaganda angle is clear, and exactly what makes me doubt the story (especially as this is fox news we're talking about).

cygx• 14 years ago

So did someone from 4chan actually phone the FBI as threatened last June?

See http://i.imgur.com/HlHnJ.png if you don't mind coarse language...

hack_edu4• 14 years ago

Funny tht right around the time he was arrested, Lulzsec declared they were done and sailing off in their Lulzboat. Then they reappeared a few months later, probably started back up after Sabu went to the narcs. Luckily this was only after Anonymous put together their new decentralized teams that do the footwork now. Lulzsec is just a name now, very little work is done by their namesake anymore.

The writer is a bit confused. Topiary was caught way before this round of arrests.

Also, there has been a significant belief for months now that the "Real Sabu" disappeared and was (maybe) arrested, or that he was never an individual but only a name the group used for PR. Finally, there is significant doubt that Kayla is a single individual as well.

lollancf37• 14 years ago

In short as usual we don't know anything ...

gavinlynch5• 14 years ago

"Luckily this was only after Anonymous put together their new decentralized teams that do the footwork now."

"Luckily" ?

hack_edu4• 14 years ago

Luckily for them and, in my opinion, you and me as well.

Edit: Feel free to downvote, please tell me why my opinion is not a valid contribution to the discussion.

nakkiel3• 14 years ago

Any idea why they don't mention the nationality of Hector Xavier Monsegur? His name sounds like Spanish or French but it could be otherwise. In the end, it's confusing and I can't really get a geographical idea of the Lulzsec thing.

trotsky3• 14 years ago

US national - NY.

corford3• 14 years ago

Apparently he's Puerto Rican but lives in NY (at least according to: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/06/lulzsec-sab...).

nakkiel3• 14 years ago

According to Wired, he lives in New York.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/lulzsec-snitch/

darkstar999• 14 years ago

Why does it matter?

JonnieCache• 14 years ago

I reckon a huge proportion of blackhats in the scene are working for the feds.

Some kid with no record gets thrown in a van by men with guns, and the full force of police psychological manipulation is brought to bear on them. They get told they're irrevocably destined for a lifetime of being brutally raped in the showers.

Is it any surprise that these young men with no experience of foul-play or maliciousness outside of the virtual world fold and turn informer with such regularity?

If I were an active blackhat, I wouldn't talk to anyone, ever. I wouldn't even invent a pseudonym, that's the first step to ending up on fox news.

EDIT: Eric Corley, publisher of 2600, thinks it's one in four: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/06/us-hackers-...

Zarathust• 14 years ago

Groups allow information trading. It is basically essential if you want to cash for your hacking activities, such as carding and 0-day selling. I am not totally familiar with "the scene", but I'm pretty sure there are plenty of incentives for hackers to regroup

epoxyhockey• 14 years ago

Grouping to trade 0-days is totally different than grouping to DDOS a website. I'm pretty sure the former won't end you up in jail, either.

But, I think the OP is right. The only successful (for lack of a better word) black hat is going to be a loner.

rajpaul3• 14 years ago

Not 0-day, but you might find it interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DarkMarket

DarkMarket was an English-speaking internet cybercrime forum created by Renukanth Subramaniam in London that was shut down in 2008 after FBI agent J. Keith Mularski infiltrated it using the alias Master Splyntr, leading to more than 60 arrests worldwide. Subramaniam, who used the alias JiLsi, admitted conspiracy to defraud and was sentenced to nearly five years in prison in February 2010.

The website allowed buyers and sellers of stolen identities and credit card data to meet and conduct criminal enterprise in an entrepreneurial, peer-reviewed environment. It had 2,500 users at its peak.

rajpaul3• 14 years ago

I also think that a lot of black hats are working for the feds. But I think it has more to do with their lack of integrity and morals rather than threats and intimidation.

Legal advice is a big part of black hat literature, so I don't think any of them can claim ignorance.

sliverstorm3• 14 years ago

Not to mention, they wouldn't typically have met their co-conspirators face-to-face. It is much easier to turn on an anonymous handle on the computer screen than a human face.

phaus• 14 years ago

There's also the ones that actually have morality and integrity and thus find honor in serving one's country.

This doesn't mean that everything the Government does is beneficial to society, but people seem to forget that many government employees have good intentions.

Auguste• 14 years ago

What do you mean you "wouldn't even invent a pseudonym"? What does that have to do with getting caught?

Shaanie• 14 years ago

As you get more attention the chance of getting caught increases, I'd imagine.

zby• 14 years ago

That reminds me of Albert Gonzales and The Great Cyberheist (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/magazine/14Hacker-t.html?p...) - awesome story. Gonzales was broken by FBI and became their agent - but then he got somehow bored by the cooperation and returned back to his underground activities while still working for FBI.

tannerburson• 14 years ago

So a guy hacks github, he's a hero. A guy hacks a bunch of media organizations, and he's a villain. I really don't understand the groupthink these days.

How is one of these okay, and the other not?

sek• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(computer_security)#Clas...

icebraining• 14 years ago

Your error is assuming there is groupthink.

KarlJakober• 14 years ago

Can someone image link so I dont have to go to fox news?

colbyh• 14 years ago

Is this the ultimate troll move?

feralchimp2• 14 years ago

It will be a while before we have a real sense of how "crippling" this rollup really was.

driverdan2• 14 years ago

As a former blackhat and ID thief who used to spend a lot of time in "underground" chatrooms and forums this doesn't surprise me at all. This is a standard pattern LE follows. Start with small arrests, work your way up, get someone at the top level to be an informant, take everyone down. Works for any type of group.

This always works because people are foolish and too trusting. The best rule is to assume everyone is LE trying to catch you. That means never revealing info that can lead back to you, never telling anyone personal info, your general location (eg the weather), always using 7 proxies, etc.

People who don't break the law would probably be surprised how much personal info crackers give to their online "friends". Less so on fraud forums but it still happens.

As some other people mentioned read "Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground" for more info on how LE works. The FBI took over a few carding forums and Secret Service also had high level CIs.

mkramlich2• 14 years ago

> The best rule is to assume everyone is LE trying to catch you.

This sounds wise. But I'd argue that it's wiser to not be engaging in activities where you even have to worry about that. If your rule is the best rule, my rule is even better. :P

driverdan2• 14 years ago

Non sequitur. If you don't do something, negative consequences won't happen. You can say that about anything. Don't have sex if you don't want STDs, don't drive a car if you don't want to get into an accident, don't walk down the street at night if you don't want to get mugged.

alecco• 14 years ago

From the rt story:

> Monsegur pled guilty to several charges of computer hacking conspiracy, for which he could receive a maximum of 124 years behind bars.

That's what a serial killer would get. US law is ridiculously tilt to corporations.

freehunter• 14 years ago

Note that he hasn't actually been sentenced to 124 years. We're talking about multiple stacking charges here. You could get multiple charges of parking too far from the curb and it could add up to thousands of dollars, but that doesn't mean the parking fine is too much.

More than likely, it'll be reduced to a sane amount when the compile the charges. 5 years, maybe 10 (maybe more). The actual sentence (minimum sentences notwithstanding) is almost always up to the judge.

sliverstorm3• 14 years ago

Yup, maximum sentences are actually generally there for the protection of the defendant; they put a ceiling on sentencing. Without them sentencing would be entirely up to a judge's discretion.

im3w1l• 14 years ago

Maybe punishments shouldn't be linear.

st3fan• 14 years ago

"The offshoot of the loose network of hackers, Anonymous, believed to have caused billions of dollars in damage to governments, international banks and corporations..."

Wait .. what ... !?

We are talking about those guys with The Love Boat theme right?

vetler• 14 years ago

No honor among hackers?

werdnanoslen• 14 years ago

They defaced a few websites and stole plaintext/unsalted databases, and Fox makes them sound like terrorists. How surprising.

gavinlynch5• 14 years ago

One question: If the FBI knew of additional hacks that could expose things such as customer credit card numbers, should they have intervened? Did they intervene?

hack_edu4• 14 years ago

If they were involved an operation to export thousands of guns to Mexican drug gangs[1], surely killing hundreds in the process, then yes. If they knew, they probably wouldn't intervene. Even still, few (any?) Lulzsec attacks actually leaked unencrypted credit card data. Even then, the damage done by exposing credit cards is pretty negligible anyway.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal

gavinlynch5• 14 years ago

Forgive me if this information is not correct, but wasn't their latest attack of Stratfor exactly such a hack?

I recall that Stratfor kept a lot of customer information in plaintext, including CC's.

codesuela• 14 years ago

No surprise here considering that 25% of hackers cooperate with law enforcement[1]. These people aren't hardened members of violent crime organisations like Gangs or various mobs and are probably very easy to "break". On the other side hackers tend to trust each other way to much and share personal details inside their group which makes infiltration very easy. Sure you can be behind 7 proxies when you hack something but that doesn't matter as soon as you start talking to your hacker buddies about your personal life without using OTR or even bothering to sign into chat services with a proxy. As soon you start sharing details about how you're in love with a girl or that you feel depressed or you are about to order pizza at place X it's pretty much over for you.

These hacker groups are like a clique a social circle of friends but most "hackers" don't think that their "friends" will rat them out in a second. Most of them probably have never been interrogated or even any contact with law enforcement and therefor very easy to intimidate.

[1]http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/06/us-hackers-...

tokenadult• 14 years ago

The Fox News reporting can be supplemented by the official FBI press release on the arrests:

http://www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-releases/2012/six-hackers-i...

LulzSec brought down by own leader

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