Self-proclaimed LulzSec leader arrested | Hacker News Reader

Self-proclaimed LulzSec leader arrested

abc.net.au

37 pointsakandiah40 comments

Why would anybody self-proclaim to be associated with any group that could even be remotely linked to illegal activity or political dissension? Especially a group colloquially known as a script kiddie haven.

Every time I hear about people getting caught up in stuff like this, I'm reminded of the book "True Names" by Vernor Vinge. As long as nobody knows your real (government) name, you have a degree of safety in cyberspace. But once your identity is known, you become a much bigger target.

>Why would anybody self-proclaim to be associated with any group that could even be remotely linked to illegal activity or political dissension?

Same reason some criminals brag about their exploits on Facebook... only to be caught the same day.

Pride, status and notoriety.

For something referred to as cred. This is a mix of social status, proof of skills, and attitude. Gangs use cred as a way to measure the value of their members. A person who brags about doing illegal things is only doing so to elevate his cred. Having street cred is more valuable than money in many circles. Due to how it allows a person to operate within a limited set of rules inside a community. A gang member with a lot of cred can simply do things other members cannot. Such as having first pick at food, housing, vehicles, and money.

to my dismay, internet cred does not share a 1:1 ratio with street cred.

Depends on various factors. It may be valued higher. Posting online nets a wider audience.

Internet cred applies to pen cred surprisingly. If you go down for hacking and do not become an informant, you will find job offers inside the pen for teaching other criminals comsec so they can run their outside drug operations. If they can read about you then it applies to your standings in the pen hierarchy.

That's why prison is never rehab for hackers. They just network with the street criminals and come out super criminals with full cred like Max Vision or the software developer kid here where I live that did a bid for bank fraud, met some gangsters in prison, paroled as a ranking member in their violent dial a dope crew and police have been unable to break up the gang since he joined and took over the comsec and allegedly money laundering for them. They accused him of being able to leak the whereabouts of rivals to his own gang too by social engineering the media and police, plus hacking their blackberries. Strong security knowledge + violent criminal pact with bikers = not good

How do you know stuff like this? Can you recommend a good book that covers recent history?

You might find this book interesting. http://www.amazon.com/Kingpin-Hacker-Billion-Dollar-Cybercri...

I've read it and can confirm its a good read. I think this guy was arrested in 2005 or 2007 but that's going on memory from over a year ago.

Good, entertaining read. I get the impression it was sanitized a great deal, because I was sorely disappointed with the lack of technical meat-n-potatoes.

For instance, the author totally glossed over how they recovered the data from his encrypted storage at the end. Was the PC left on and the screen not locked? Cold boot attack? Brute force? Hell, they didn't even specify exactly which crypto software was used.

He fell asleep while he left his servers on. So they simply siphoned the keys from memory. He used some proprietary Israeli made encryption software and FreeBSD, but it didn't matter because everything including Truecrypt keeps your keys in memory when mounted.

Even if his server was off, they could have broken into his safehouse and sabotaged the unencrypted bootloader. Only defense against this is use OpenBSD 5.3 which allows booting from fully encrypted drives, or keep your unencrypted boot partition on a usb stick you carry around.

I wrote a cpl of twitterbots that basically went full provacateur to test the reaction to them during Arab Spring / OWS and find out who is surveilling what, and how they react. Fascinating results, and it seems no one thought "maybe we're being trolled, lets keep some cards close to our chest". But there's a big difference between looking for exploits by trolling and what this cat did.

Huh, that's interesting. Did you ever write up and share what you found? I'd like to read it.

Honestly? I learned that when you stir up shit you better be ready to be on a lot of lists. I am now very paranoid, like have an airwall and never ever talk politics online scary.

LulzSec was nothing more than a few script-kiddies trying to act tough by causing mayhem for no reason other than for the "lulz" if they found the leader, great work. Anyone with access to Government information who abuses that power without a noble cause deserves to be jailed.

The noble cause was the lulz. It was a 1990s style infiltration and defacing spree that didn't take itself super serial like all those moralist Anon hackers who don't realize that back in 2003 Anon was an inside joke.

They were crowd sourcing silly pranks like raining dongs in second life and writing hilarious over the top propaganda about these caveats, which was supposed to be ridiculous in it's menacing, in order to troll the media. Media never got the joke, was trolled along until unfunny fundies picked up the torch and hijacked the movement into petty politics devoid of even the smallest lulz. That's when Lulzsec decided to start up, to bring some 1990s style comedic anarchy but it ended horribly with almost all of them in jail except for SnitchBu.

Unless this Australian is 'Virus' the guy who hung around #pure-elite on their watched IRC server then he isn't lulzsec. You'd have to be a fool to use that name anyways it's a good way to get law enforcement attention

Just because you disagree with their actions it doesn't mean that they were just random script-kiddies. I am not a hacker but it certainly seemed like they had at least a modicum of true skill.

For some reason it seems that most people can't differentiate between the skill and morality of an action.

They did not have a modicum of skill. I'm neutral on their endeavours, however LOIC and SQL injection is skiddy stuff.

LOIC, yes, but that was anonymous. SQL injection is a vulnerability - it does not make you good or bad for using it.

  | SQL injection is skiddy stuff

Why would a hacker use something overly complex when the site in question was vulnerable to SQL injection? Do true hackers with 'mad skillz' spend months to find truly unique hacks to express their artistry as well as their skills?

Why do you call those people hackers? Hackers build things, don't piss on other people's work.

Sorry. I thought that "black hat" was implicit.

It's not clear from the article if he used his position to gain access to any of the systems he is accused of illegally using. Many hackers are employed in positions of responsibility, but have the common sense not to shit where they eat.

wait.. what? Lulzsec died when Sabu turned snitch years ago. Who is this Australian and why is the article confusing the real "Lulzsec" with this random Australian guys antics.

Unless you were part of Lulzsec, there's no way to know how far reaching they were. The Internet isn't specific to one or two countries after all.

And I'm not really sure if Lulzsec "died" either. There are plenty more able and willing people on IRC. Besides, I doubt any one person is at the helm of this boat to begin with.

There was only a small core group of people inside Lulzsec. They were all arrested except Virus. He's not stupid enough to get caught either in fact he called Sabu being a CI the day he came back online after being busted and started offering people money to break into federal honeypots. This is why Virus is still free and not sitting in the pen

Interesting. So this is basically a collection of cheerleaders with a loud and closely tied handful of "actors". The fact that Virus is free and most others are not leads me to believe, for all their loud talking, most were hopelessly naïve.

intrusion teams that are willing to talk up their hijinks to the press are almost always going down. 30 years worth of busts have left an undeniable pattern - if you mock the investigators, get in the papers more than once, and you're in a cooperative country you're not long for the business.

Skip most of those aspects, and don't steal millions, and you'll probably never have the resources dedicated to you. lulzsec conducted themselves defensively enough for anyone doing data theft and PII to be unlikely to get caught if they weren't making it public. If there is one thing feds do it's form grudges.

  | He's not stupid enough to get caught either

He wasn't stupid enough to get caught. You have no idea if he will or won't get caught in the future.

LulzSec attacked Australian government systems in June 2011 [1]. Given that Oz is not exactly a high-profile target, it wouldn't surprise me if one of the members was Ozzie - especially as this guy allegedly had inside access to gov systems.

I am however skeptical that he's the "leader".

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-06-17/lulzsec-leaks-australi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histrionic_personality_disorde...

Senior IT professional at 24? The seniority standard must be pretty low nowadays.

If they went to college and graduated young they could have 6 years experience. That's considered senior base on job postings.

I thought "self-proclaimed LulzSec leader" was an oxymoron?

they should charge him with impersonating a federal officer

It's worth considering that there is some kind of political element to what this group has been doing. Perhaps if there were some viable avenues for young people across the world to meaningfully influence the political process and/or resist massive global corporations treating them as captured consumers they would be more willing and able to adopt alternative means of expression (or entertainment).

There absolutely a way for people of all ages across the world to meaningfully influence the political process.

They could make a meaningful difference by forming an organization that collected names of interested parties and kept them informed of news and action events. Imagine how powerful a lobbying group you could be if you had hundreds of thousands of people on a mailing list who would be influenced by your recommendation on a vote.

I'm president of a non-profit and we've made meaningful changes in our city by organizing to influence our elected officials.

That's just one example but there are many others that a dedicated group of individuals can influence the system and counter special interest groups beyond their own single vote.

Look, I'm not saying your non-profit is useless or your position is that of a straw-man, but you have to view your local situation in context. It's tiny.

To clarify, I am not saying that political representation never happens, just that it's virtually impossible for young people to feel they have any impact in most western nations.

Let's take your example right there.

First of all, it's geographically localized. Local issues mostly affect people who have made a commitment to be in a given area for an extended part of their life, usually through property. In general, this makes them an older group, and by definition coming from a different sociological/cultural/financial/traditional axis than younger people. So on local issues, young people are at an immediate disadvantage in terms of participation, because they are not taken seriously. (I would argue that increasingly young people evade this tyranny of local affairs by seeking membership in the online communities that transcend such petty borders, but that's a tangent.)

Secondly, your idea is to influence voting. Great. Nonviolent change, etc. Captain obvious here: the rest of the world largely sees the US as an aggressor. Can you seriously, with all the information available today, see an end to US warmongering coming from votes? No. The two party system in to which most western societies have collapsed is a false dichotomy; it's a side-show from the real power which persists dynastically and 'contributes' (read: bribes) whomever or whatever they see fit to maintain that position. This is well documented. This is not unique to the US.

Coming back to local issues then, what is the wider effect of people forming issue-oriented groups in local areas? For one, it basically acts to lend credence to the objectively dead idea of representation under the current systems, rather than fostering meaningful debate in to how exactly things went wrong in the first place.

I could expand on this further but I'm just saying that young people who operate on a much shorter timeframe for most issues probably do not have the funds, geographic ties or energy to make the inefficient, long-haul battles required to influence anything at all, even to the level you are seeing in your local non-profit. You must be well aware of how much effort is involved to make minor changes. Consider then, that local issues are likely the last bastion of any nominally participative representation in the current system. Consider further, that the apathy felt by the young is global and not only of your nation.

Personally I have lived in quite a few countries. My observation is that there is an extreme feeling of political and socioeconomic disempowerment amongst the youth globally, and that there is systemic change coming. Given such an outlook, my own feeling is that limiting one's perspectives to that which is determined as acceptable under the current system of 'free world democracy' is tantamount to capitulation.

Much respect for doing something locally though. If the whole world did, we'd undoubtedly be in a better place, but at the macro level we'd still be being taken for a ride.

"So on local issues, young people are at an immediate disadvantage in terms of participation"

I disagree. If it's an issue they're passionate about, young people join the fight just as much as any other age demographic. I've seen a good mix of both young and old in our activism. If anything, it's the young people who protest and older people who fund them.

Here is video I created from the action our organization took on. Atheists United (the org I run) is represented by both young and old. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXShZ5ZyYPY

Yes, we're local, but we choose to be. There are organizations that take on national issues and rally people across the nation to change laws and elections.

Yes, the system is deeply flawed (agreed: bribes) but it's not outside our ability to change. We have power in numbers. The more we organize, the more we can change the system. If lulzsec spent time and publicity on organizing, they would be a major force for change.

Edit: by "fund them" I mean, fund the organization with donations. The funding of the organization allows for us to have the resources to organize and protest.

There is, but young people are lazy and preoccupied with playing video games. They like to pretend it's because "corporations are in bed with the government, etc, etc" but only because it's easier to rationalize it that way than to admit that the country's policy looks pretty much exactly how you'd expect it to look when all the voters are old people.

The one thing politicians are more about than campaign contributions are votes, and there are no votes in being in favor of open internet, etc. The people in that demographic are too busy considering themselves too good to participate in the system to be a source of votes.

There's some value in what you are saying.

However, it still sounds like a circular argument to me - ie. Youth: "No form of participation you are giving us amounts to representation." Old people: "You are not participating in this system the way the existing power base determines acceptable, therefore you deserve what you get".

Objectively, with regards to votes, it's well acknowledged that democracy only functions well with an educated populace. The reality is that the US promotes a two-tiered (have and have-not) education system and an extremely centralized, near-on centralized corporate stranglehold on the mass media.

While it is still possible for an individual citizen to make an informed vote, the effort (to say nothing of social isolation) required to properly research and voice an opinion on any given issue against the mass media line can be extreme, whilst accountability for political promises at campaign time versus actual behaviour of those in office is essentially zero. Now honestly, that's not very democratic, is it?

Of course, to be apathetic and disenchanted is easy: proposing an alternative and effecting a transition is the not insignificant challenge. Thus, I am quite interested to see what kinds of transparency policies the Wikileaks Party proposes in Australia, and how this is echoed in Europe through the Pirate Party.

We live in interesting times!

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