Inside Anonymous: ‘Topiary’ talks hacking and life after LulzSec

While lulzsec were having their fun and getting mainstream media attention I had an excellent conversation with my Dad. He asked me simply who I thought was behind this kind of "hackivision". I explained that it was most probably intelligent but bored teenage kids living somewhere remote. I went on to tell him about the difference between script kiddies and real black hats.

His take away lesson was that if smart and bored kids could defeat the security of all these serious sites then the people who are actually really good at cracking into things and doing it with out being noticed probably have free reign over the internet.

It was pretty easy to convince him to start using complex pass phrases and not reuse them.

There are many sides to the cracking community, and the nefarious side of it is just as "legit" as the law-abiding side. They've been at it just as long and many of them are just as skilled as their legal counterparts. Note that when I say "legit" I'm not condoning their actions, I just recognize that they are a part of our history, and that many of them are good at what they do.

Sure, there are things that Anonymous and Lulzsec have done that weren't very impressive (like the DDoS attacks) but at times both groups have pulled of some pretty impressive stuff.

Practical jokes conducted via technology have a long and storied history in the hacker community, its disingenuous to act like Lulzsec's continuation of this tradition somehow maligns everyone else's reputation.

Also, unless you can prove that he was just a mouthpiece, there isn't really any way that you can argue his sentence was excessive when he only spent 37 days in prison. Sabu became an FBI informant, and I bet that even with his deal, he's going to end up getting anywhere from several years to a few decades when he's finally sentenced.

That and "you can get an astonishingly long way on nothing but gumption". Can you honestly say that the Wired shoe story didn't make you smile? Not even a little?

He seems like an interesting guy, and I hope his mystery employer is channeling his energy in useful directions.

Huh. Some of the folks who were busted stateside had the condition that they were not permitted to knowingly communicate or associate with Anonymous in their supervised release agreements. A small but important distinction, I suppose, if someone wants to get you to unwittingly break the terms.

Almost certainly the case.