The members of the notorious hacking group LulzSec, have been arrested, being turned in by the group’s leader, the BBC reports.
The group, with ties to Anonymous, wreaked havoc with companies like Sony and security firm HBGary, to MasterCard and PayPal, in retaliation for attempting to suppress Wikileaks and for going after hardware hackers.
Five men from the U.S, the U.K., and Ireland have all been arrested. Hector Xavier Monsegur had already been arressted and had pleaded guilty of hacking in July. He was cooperating with law enforcment agencies, including the FBI and Scotland Yard.
The names of the other people arrested were Jake Davis from Lerwick, Shetland Islands, Ryan Ackroyd from Doncaster, England, Darryn Martyn, from Galway, Ireland, and Donncha O’Cearrbhail, from Birr, Ireland.
Another member, Jeremy Hammond, aka Anarchaos, was arrested in connection with the hacking of Stratfor, a private intelligence firm. The Stratfor documents stolen form Wikileaks’ latest big data dump.
Hackers were angered by the idea of being betrayed by one of their own, rapidly posting personal information in retaliation.
But will the arrest of LulzSec members spell the end of Anonymous? Most observers and members of Anonymous themselves say no.
“Anonymous is a very different organisation to Lulzsec and other more closely linked groups – anyone can and does act in the name of Anonymous and their activities do not require individual hacker publicity or disclosure of personally identifiable details,” “Anonymous is a very different organisation to Lulzsec and other more closely linked groups – anyone can and does act in the name of Anonymous and their activities do not require individual hacker publicity or disclosure of personally identifiable details,” Trend Micro’s director of security research, Rik Ferguson, told the BBC.
Anonymous members seemed to agree with that assessment. AnonymousIRC tweeted: “We’re sailing close to the wind, our crew is complete and doing fine.”
YourAnonNews also tweeted: “Anonymous is a hydra, cut off one head and we grow two back.”
We covered LulzSec’s antics in a post last year. We also named their PSN hack one of the biggest tech controversies of 2011.
