LulzSec And Anonymous Team Up to Hack Governments and Banks
If you had been wondering if the strange world of the LulzSec hacking troupe could get any stranger after its numerous flagrant attacks against gaming companies and government agencies, it did just that over the weekend.
First off, the group announced on Twitter an alliance of sorts with Anonymous, the hacker group that made headlines earlier this year for its attacks in support of Wikileaks.
In its new campaign, which it has dubbed Operation Anti-Security (or by the Twitter hashtag #AntiSec), the group says it has declared “immediate and unremitting war” on governments and corporations. Its top priority is to “steal and leak any classified government information,” including but not limited to email and documentation. “Prime targets are banks and other high-ranking establishments,” it said in a document released via Pastebin.
Their first target appeared to be the U.K.’s Serious Organised Crime Agency, also known as SOCA. In yet another tweet, LulzSec announced that the agency’s Web site was “Tango Down,” indicating it had been hit with a denial of service attack meant to make it inaccessible to legitimate users.
In another development, which LulzSec is as yet ignoring, a rival faction has emerged calling itself the Web Ninjas and claiming to have named LulzSec’s various members. The claims were naturally impossible to independently verify, though they likely constitute leads that many law enforcement agencies will follow up on.
It’s not the first time someone has attempted to name a supposed member of LulzSec. Earlier this month, someone posting to the Full Disclosure mailing list claiming that a member of the group had been arrested by the FBI in Long Island, New York. The arrest claim didn’t check out, and the person who made the claim hasn’t been heard from again so far as I’m aware.
Besides, in the always shifting world of the hacker underground, allegiances and motivations can change faster than a teenager’s mood. The scene is rife with numerous cases of false flags and red herrings that may be meant to implicate an enemy, or indeed to throw investigators off the trail.
PREVIOUSLY:
- Viral Video: LulzSec Gets Taiwanesed
- CIA Web Site Goes Down; LulzSec Takes Credit
- LulzSec Blasts Space Game Eve Online, Other Gaming Sites
- LulzSec Strikes Again, Hits Bethesda Softworks And U.S. Senate
- Turkey Arrests 32 Alleged Members of Anonymous, Days After Arrests in Spain
- Web Security Start-Up Cloudflare Gets Buzz, Courtesy of LulzSec Hackers
- No Hacks to Report at Xbox, But Microsoft Isn’t Letting Its Guard Down
- No LulzSec Hackers Have Been Arrested–At Least Not Yet
- LulzSec Posts More Sony Data, Amid Claim One of Them Is Arrested
LulzSec Strikes Again, Claims Attack On Nintendo Server
Sony Hacked for What Seems To Be the Umpteenth Time - Sony’s Playstation Network Is Back. Sony’s Reputation Will Take a Little Longer.
- Exclusive: Sony Considers Offering Reward to Help Catch Hackers
- Anonymous Claims It Took No Credit Card Numbers From Sony
- Sony Implicates Anonymous in Attack; Group Denies Involvement
- Sony Apologizes For the Playstation Network Breach
- Sony Blames PlayStation Outage on “External Intrusion”