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For the past couple of months, a band of wily and vainglorious hackers known as Lulz Security (or LulzSec) have been on a mission of mayhem, trespassing wherever they saw fit and helping themselves to bundle after bundle of personal information. They've embarrassed government agencies and pissed off the gaming community at large, and now they're supposedly hanging up their hats and sailing off into the sunset. But is this really the end?
According to LulzSec, which issued its "final release" over the weekend, the six-person band of boisterous hackers planned all along to disrupt the Internet for 50 days.
"It's time to say bon voyage," LulzSec posted. "Our planned 50 day cruise has expired, and we must now sail into the distance, leaving behind -- we hope -- inspiration, fear, denial, happiness, approval, disapproval, mockery, embarrassment, thoughtfulness, jealousy, hate, even love. If anything, we hope we had a microscopic impact on someone, somewhere. Anywhere.
"Thank you for sailing with us. The breeze is fresh and the sun is setting, so now we head for the horizon."
As a parting gift of sorts, LulzSec released the personal data of hundreds of thousands of people in a data dump that includes user emails from 50,000 accounts from random gaming forums, router logins, private investigator emails, and AOL and AT&T internal data and documents, among other things, all neatly organized in a Torrent file.
Authorities appear to have been closing in on LulzSec in recent weeks, starting with the arrest of a 19-year-old suspected of having strong ties with the hacking organization. This may have played a role in the group's decision to suddenly disband, though they hinted that this might not be the end.
"Wile we are responsible for everything that The Lulz Boat is, we are not tied to this identity permanently," the group said. "Behind this jolly visage of rainbows and top hats, we are people."
LulzSec went on to say that it believes in the AntiSec movement, so much so that "we brought it back, much to the dismay of those looking for more anarchic lulz. We hope, wish, even beg, that the movement manifests itself into a revolution that can continue on without us."
Comments are closed on this article
Edwincnelson
June 27, 2011 at 3:35pm
We live in a society where people sometimes shoot each other for cutting them off on the freeway. In China that guy stabbed a stranger over a WOW disagreement. How long is it before some crazy guy who has his password dumped on the internet by these idiots gets a baseball bat and beats one of these idiot hackers to death? The Feds might just give them timed served but if you just randomly start picking on strangers you never know what kind of bees nest your going to disturb.
tornato7
June 27, 2011 at 5:54pm
Except that nobody knows who or where these hackers are, especially the kind of person who would beat someone to death with a baseball bat for that. How could he possibly find the hackers?
kixofmyg0t
June 27, 2011 at 2:37pm
Wait a second...is that Sabu's address? Hector Monsugur? That address is a daycare i think. idk though.
KenLV
June 27, 2011 at 10:39am
Sounds about right. And gee, is THIS why they NEVER mentioned that their “anarchy” had an expiration date? Now that’s some lulz!
As soon as I started reading these stories this weekend all I kept thinking was:
“I meant to do THAT. No, really, I did!”With the tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars at risk/lost here and the lives put in danger and an opportunity to track these careless fucker down, do you think that suddenly because they call “time out” that all the police/govn’t/companies that are hunting them will suddenly stop?
Could these jokers really be that naive? Oh god, I hope so.
Weezey
June 27, 2011 at 6:55am
Sure sounds like they're running scared, especially after those IRC logs leaked. Not enough information to tell for sure but hopefully we'll hear about them in a few weeks getting locked up. Or at least that's what I want to hear. Especially after the mocking of the member who wanted out, because they wont hear laughter from the cold jail cell, but something else a little more sinister.
ChatterboxChuck
June 27, 2011 at 10:41am
can't possibly imagine why anyone would think this way, besides them of course. What, you condone this kind of abuse? I wonder how you would feel if you were a victim of their shiannigans?
tornato7
June 27, 2011 at 6:03pm
What lulzsec was doing did have an overall positive impact on the web. It showed companies and individuals that they have to wake up and realize that internet security needs to be looked at seriously. By doing so and making sure that if was publicized all over the world, it will help people and companies be prepared for when there's someone stealing this info for highly malicious purposes, instead of just for the 'lulz.' so whether they meant to help the internet or not, they did. HOWEVER, you shouldn't go breaking into houses and then telling them that they were asking for it because they left their front door unlocked. So, I don't condone this activity, but I think it would be better to have my house broken in and hardly anything stolen (or all the photos on my wall replaced with photos of penises) and realize the error of my ways than to have all my stuff stolen and have no chance to correct my security.
KenLV
June 28, 2011 at 11:17am
“…but I think it would be better to have my house broken in and hardly anything stolen (or all the photos on my wall replaced with photos of penises) and realize the error of my ways than to have all my stuff stolen and have no chance to correct my security.”
That might be true IF what they did could reasonably be defended against. To continue your analogy, how would YOU correct YOUR security at your home if they surrounded your house with 5,000 people and you and your friends could not even get to your lawn, let alone your front door? Or what would you do to prevent them from taking a bulldozer to your front door? How would either of these two scenarios help you “…realize the error of your ways…”??
I think all it would do is piss you off and make a mess of things.
I understand that good people want to look for the positive side of things, but despite their defenders claims otherwise, their intent has been clear from the beginning they are vandals. Plain and simple.
frizzly
June 27, 2011 at 7:15pm
hey, whats the name of that restaruant with all the carttons all over the walls?
Caboose
June 27, 2011 at 9:35am
Why? Did you think that they were "fighting for the little guy" for "the oppressed citizens of the internet" and crap like that?
DDRDiesel
June 27, 2011 at 7:10am
"Sure sounds like they're running scared, especially after those IRC logs leaked."
I think they're running BECAUSE the IRC logs were leaked, IMO. They always used the same handle, on the same IRC server. Who's to say a traceroute won't eventually find them (After the many jumps through the proxies)?
Caboose
June 27, 2011 at 9:34am
IRC Server admins have access to IP addresses, etc. If they didn't cover their asses, its just a matter of time for the authorities to track down each member via their IP with the help of ISPs.
Nimrod
June 27, 2011 at 2:37pm
Yeah, unless they just loged in from a star bucks some where or something trivial like that before going thru all their VPNs and proxies. Then its just OOPS.
DDRDiesel
June 27, 2011 at 9:38am
If you read the logs (And I mean ALL of them), they say that they are behind VPNs and proxies. It also complicates things when the IRC server admin is arrested
TerribleToaster
June 27, 2011 at 7:52am
Werid how this "planned" 50 day adventure was never mentioned in their leaked chat logs. You'd think that they'd talk about how they were planning to end things at least once as a group.
yu119995
June 27, 2011 at 6:42am
I wonder how long it'll be before more governments start to use this is an excuse to further rape our civil liberties; before all traffic is monitored and/or controlled in the name of national security. *sigh*
level1paladin
June 27, 2011 at 8:44am
Agreed. To say hackers or any groups like that are the cause is ridiculous. The governments want to rape our civil liberties anyway. Using these groups as the catalyst just happens to be handy for them. Unfortunately, people let the governments get away with all sorts of things, so they'll keep doing it regardless.
ChatterboxChuck
June 27, 2011 at 10:40am
Lets not get ahead of ourselves here. While the Gov't will abuse this issue, they would not have this to be abused had these guys not gone too far. 2 wrongs don't make a right and these guys were way wrong in my opinion. You can't justify punishing one group of people but releasing information they had on other people who are not at fault here. That's like killing the children of the criminals.
bikerbub
June 27, 2011 at 11:56am
i agree. I think that going up to a company with snot for security and showing them what's up. As long as you keep all of those CC numbers, passwords, and emails, or don't take them, but look at them, and only tell the comany, that's cool. If you instead go out to that domain, take the numbers and such, and torrent them to the community, you're harming the people you're trying to protect more than you're harming the company that you're trying to scold.
