Admin of irc.lulzsec.org Arrested in UK | Hacker News Reader

Admin of irc.lulzsec.org Arrested in UK

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75 pointsmuratmutlu41 comments

I'll believe it when LulzSec stops hacking things. Between the spanish police arresting the "leaders" of Anonymous, the FBI meeting with Aaron Barr to learn the identities of the "leaders" of Anonymous, and LEAs the world over generally not understanding this newfangled Internet business, I have precious little faith in their ability to actually get the people responsible. The only people who've been arrested so far were those who used LOIC.

It wouldn't surprise me if Ryan was hanging out in the LulzSec irc (hundreds did), or even if he was involved in a couple of the attacks. LulzSec has made no secret of the fact that they regularly get other people to do a lot of their attacks, and that they publish information given to them by others.

It's a lot sexier for the british police and the FBI to say they've captured a ringleader than "some guy loosely affiliated with", but I highly suspect he's the latter, if anything.

He ran the irc server for LulzSec. Not exactly loosely affiliated, but still not their mastermind.

They had a chatroom on his irc server. They also had chatrooms on efnet, 2600, anonops, and rizon. So to claim he's a big part of the organization is pretty disingenuous. Of course, the question remains whether the authorities are being deliberately dishonest, or if they actually think he's a "leading figure" in LulzSec. I'm not sure which outcome would be more depressing, although I suppose I'd take an incompetent government over an evil one any day.

19 years old & English - this was kind of obvious, really.

In my experience, people interested in hacking and infosec over the age of 25 are more likely to know about 2600 and hold it in some regard, unlike those younger than 25. Hence, it was pretty clear that lulzsec was comprised of under 25 year olds.

They also engaged in some very unlulz-y personal wars with a few people, and didn't quite seem to know limits - very much a young person trying to prove themselves too hard sort of thing.

Similarly, they hacked a number of British sites, and something about their use of langauge sounded to me, as an former forum moderator, to be rather British. 2600 is also less well known over here.

> infosex

I am trying to imagine how this is done.

http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex.htm...

(not really relevant to lulzsec, I hope no one minds)

after much deliberation, the typo has been corrected :P Clearly my regular keyboard is showing solidarity with the issues I have been having with swype on my phone today :P

I agree, an example of British English is treating a company as a plural as seen in this tweet: http://twitter.com/LulzSec/status/81400729583108097

All this reminds me the story of this guy

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

Where are you getting the specific idea that they're ignorant of 2600? Is it something they've said, or just because of their general disregard for what one might hesitantly call tradition?

Under 25 here, what would you hesitantly call tradition?

Under 25 here, what's the relevance of 2600?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2600:_The_Hacker_Quarterly

Sorry, I should have been more specific on this point - I was on my original draft, and I forgot to put it back in.

If you read through lulzsec's twitter, they entered a petty dispute with someone who hung out on a channel on the 2600 irc server. So they DDoSed 2600 as a whole and began to issue posturing tweets towards 2600.

They wrote "grey" hat rather than "gray". Or is that spelling less unique to British English than I thought?

Colors tend to be used in programming quite a bit. I'd expect quite a lot of british programmers/techies tend to write grey, even though it's not how it's spelt here. Just as we techies often write 'color' instead of 'colour'.

I use American English in programming and British English in normal writing.

Grey is the UK spelling - gray is the American.

"Grey" is the usual British English (and Australian English) spelling. "Gray" is the usual American English spelling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey

Don't forget about us Canadians (and all other British expansions), when they brought up Harper on their twitter I started noticing stuff like this, great eye cormullion.

Don't quote me on this; but someone [a professional contact] better placed to speculate on the details than the media (or dare I say; more likely to know the truth) just told me this is not related to LulzSec but an older investigation.

This rings true with a lot of the details of the arrest FWIW.

Actually, it looks like he was only the ircop of their channel, and wasn't actually involved: http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/i568z/19yearold_s...

How about that: Seems the glorious leader of LulzSec got arrested, it's all over now... wait... we're all still here! Which poor bastard did they take down? http://twitter.com/#!/LulzSec/status/83164092998758400

Would be nice of the media and all the commenters (including this thread), who all publicly crucified the guy in no time, to now apologize and stop spreading bullshit rumors.

But that'll never happen.

The master-minds of the media and those commenters are still nowhere to be found.

It's just as likely that LulzSec wouldn't admit any of them has been captured as it for the government to say that they have.

Unless Wickford is a hot bed of hacking this must be Ryan Cleary: http://www.thehackernews.com/2011/05/anonymous-irc-hacker-ry...

The LulzSec site is down too: http://lulzsec.com/ (though http://lulzsecurity.com/releases/ is still there).

http://lulzsec.org/ seems to have an FBI take-down notice with the LulzSec logo on it.

Edit: as DarkShikari mentioned, lulzsec.org has been like this for a while.

Link to the Met Police post: http://content.met.police.uk/News/eCrime-unit-arrest-man/126...

http://lulzsecurity.com/ is still up

This is the correct address.

http://lulzsec.org/ seems to have an FBI takedown notice with the LulzSec logo on it.

This dates back a number of days; it was a joke (by Lulzsec?) in response to a (false) rumor about an FBI takedown notice.

Yeah ... FBI doesn't have the lulz to make a logo like that!

"Ryan Cleary, an alleged member of the hacking group behind the claim, LulzSec, was arrested in Essex this morning by specialist cyber crime officers from Scotland Yard."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8589078/Hackers-s...

It's actually Wickford, Essex. Early reports suggest it is a former Anonymous member, although this cannot be confirmed.

https://twitter.com/#!/y0ug/statuses/83138188570394624

> I don't want to name an innocent person, but will link to someone who thinks they know who it could be: [link]

That makes as much difference as "I'm not hitting you, this stick I am holding is hitting you".

I would say "That's a shame" but it isn't. Well done Ryan, well done indeed!

Scapegoat. The evidence will appear as and when they need it.

This whole thing (this and the supposed census leak) stinks of a false flag operation.

Darn I guess he was not Anonymous afterall..

Like I said before attacking a decentralized system with lots centralized stakeholders at some point in time makes you their bitch..

ahem people..

1. Chinese and other criminal hackers do not engage in describing activities on irc, web, etc..ever wonder why?

Its because when un-encrypted data flows through a central IP hub such as AT&T NSA has access to it in real-time.

Now think real hard, is this the real anonymous or lulzsec?

I assure you the read bad actors are spurring both anonymous and lulzsecf on in irc to do their dirty work from them than laughing their asses off when they get arrested..

Look at the irc transcripts that have been posted for yourself..that pattern is there..

Think for yourselves people do not let media do your thinking for you

I'm sorry: I cannot see a pattern, only somebody asking me for deep thinking and to avoid the media all while pedaling an unsubstantiated conspiracy.

Yeah , Its Ryan , who arrested : UK police arrest Suspected LulzSec 19 years old Mastermind : The Hacker News ~ http://www.thehackernews.com/2011/06/uk-police-arrest-suspec...

UK police arrest Suspected LulzSec 19 years old Mastermind : http://www.thehackernews.com/2011/06/uk-police-arrest-suspec...

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