by Bill Egnor
Water Cooler – Life Advice: Don’t Taunt the FBI
5:51 pm in Uncategorized by Bill Egnor
Taunting by Julius.Hibbert
You know it is a real mistake to taunt the Federal Government, especially when you have actually done something illegal. That is where LulzSec is tonight. They have been accused of participation in some of the more recent and massive hacking attacks. Which is enough to get you on the FBI radar, but when you put out a Twitter saying you will “unleash fire on multiple targets” well that is another story all together. The FBI has no sense of humor, at least none ever detected by science.
Information Weekly has a good article detailing how the FBI, Homeland Security, and international partners are working together to roll up LulzSec and Anonymous. There has been some bad blood between the two groups and the recent arrest in England of Ryan Cleary by Scotland Yard has brought it to a head.
Cleary was accused by Anonymous of exposing some of the hacking crew’s members. From the Information Weekly article:
“There’s no way you’re going to continue to get away with this stuff,” said Chester Wisneiwski, senior security advisor at Sophos. “This perception of anonymity that these guys have, as soon as the chips start to fall, your contact details are out there because either you crossed them, or they start flipping on one another when they get arrested.”
Cleary may have “crossed” Anonymous, for example, and gotten burned as a result–public infighting may have been a factor in his arrest. Online posters associated with Anonymous in May accused Cleary of stealing passwords from and revealing private details on Anonymous members, and revealed his name, email, physical address, phone number, family members’ names, and other information online.
A website called LulzSec Exposed has released numerous private chat logs from the group, and says it has personal details on certain hackers and claims to be cooperating with the FBI and international law enforcement organizations. Other details on alleged LulzSec members have been leaked on sites like Pastebin, which allows anonymous posting of text.
While the two groups are sniping at each other, the FBI is continuing to bring a circle around them. In a different but probably related story, a large group of websites were brought down by a raid the FBI conducted on a hosting facility in Reston VA.
The facility, run by DigitalOne, was raided and several servers were removed. The physical servers, not just a data dump. The New York Times Bits blog has the story. It is suspected that this is in connection with looking for Anonymous and LulzSec, but so far the FBI has refused to comment on the record but an unnamed official did say that they were investigating Lulz and any associated hackers.
Read the rest of this entry →
