Arik Hesseldahl

Recent Posts by Arik Hesseldahl

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.


#AntiSec begins today: http://t.co/2WuLmMQ Prepare yourselves. Join us, join #Anonymous, join the fleet – become a lulz lizard.
@LulzSec
The Lulz Boat

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.


Tango down – http://t.co/JhcjgO9 – in the name of #AntiSec
@LulzSec
The Lulz Boat

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.

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