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Senior Member
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Join Date: Jun 2009
Posts: 85,682
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Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2009
Posts: 85,682
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LulzSec leader was Snitch who helped snag fellow hackers
Oh dear
Quote:
LulzSec Leader Was Snitch Who Helped Snag Fellow Hackers
By Kim Zetter March 6, 2012
10:07 am
A top LulzSec leader turned informant after he was secretly arrested last year and then provided information to law enforcement which resulted in the arrest on two continents Tuesday of other top members of the hacking group, including one of the alleged leaders of the Stratfor hack, according to a news report.
Hector Xavier Monsegur, a 28-year-old New Yorker who allegedly used the online name “Sabu,” has been working undercover for the feds since the FBI arrested him without fanfare last June, according to FoxNews. Monsegur provided agents with information that helped them arrest several suspects on Tuesday, including two men from Great Britain, two from Ireland and an American in Chicago, according to FoxNews.
“This is devastating to the organization,” an FBI official told FoxNews. “We’re chopping off the head of LulzSec.”
Monsegur, an unemployed father of two, allegedly led the loosely organized group of hackers from his apartment in a public housing project in New York. After his arrest he reportedly pleaded guilty Aug. 15 to 12 hacking-related charges. Documents in his case were unsealed in New York federal court on Tuesday.
“They caught him and he was secretly arrested and now works for the FBI,” a source told FoxNews.com.
Those arrested on Tuesday include Ryan Ackroyd, aka “Kayla”; Jake Davis, aka “Topiary,” from London; Darren Martyn, aka “pwnsauce,” and Donncha O’Cearrbhail, aka “palladium,” from Ireland; and Jeremy Hammond, aka “Anarchaos,” from Chicago.
Hammond, a member of Anonymous — a group loosely affiliated with LulzSec — is believed to be the main actor behind the hack of U.S. security company Stratfor in December, which resulted in the seizure of more than 5 million company e-mails, customer credit card numbers and other confidential information. The government said in a court filing that Hammond “used some of the stolen credit card data to make at least $700,000 worth of unauthorized charges.” (.pdf)
The secret-spilling site WikiLeaks has begun to publish the Stratfor e-mail with media partners around the world.
The records show that Texas-based Stratfor encrypted its clients’ passwords, “but stored other client information, including credit card numbers and associated data, in clear text.”
The other four defendants, who the feds said were affiliated with Anonymous, are accused of a myriad of hacks on Fine Gael, HBGary and Fox Broadcasting Company, according to court records.
The four called themselves “Internet Feds,” the government said.
The charges against them would complete any hacker’s resume. They are accused of breaking into computer systems, deleting data, stealing confidential information, “including encrypted and unencrypted sensitive personal information for thousands of victims,” according to court documents. (.pdf)
Ackroyd was allegedly Monsegur’s top deputy and was responsible for uncovering vulnerabilities in the U.S. Senate’s computer systems, according to FoxNews sources.
(This post is being updated as court documents have been released.)
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http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...ulzsec-snitch/
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06-03-2012, 05:59 PM
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