LulzSec ends 50 days of hacking
(CBS) - The hacking group LulzSec has put an end to their cyber crime spree. The group responsible for hacking the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. Senate websites posted a tweet on Saturday night, announcing their final release and retirement. The statement posted on their website confirmed that their motivation for the attacks was self-amusement.
LulzSec claimed responsibility for stealing the account information
of over 77 million members of Sony's PlayStation Network. Their 50-day hacking
spree began in May with a database of "X Factor" contestants. Most recently,
they made news for releasing personal emails and addresses of Arizona law
enforcement officers.
On an interesting side note, a lone hacker by the name of "th3j35t3r" claimed to uncover two IP addresses associated with lulzsecurity.com. LulzSec posted a defensive rebuttal just hours before they announced an end to their operation. "@th3j35t3r Yeah, no, none of those are our IPs. You can't code, you can't hack, you can't play Internet detective. What CAN you do?" LulzSec tweeted.
An update to th3j35t3r's blog later pointed out that "3 Hours after this post was ummm - posted. Lulzsec announced their 'disbandment' and said farewell." The scrutiny of other hackers and the arrest of suspected 19-year-old Ryan Cleary may have prompted the group to retire.
Accusations that Cleary was their leader were rebuffed by LulzSec. The group claimed that they did not even know the young hacker, whose code name is ev0. A statement posted to Pastebin, claiming to represent LulzSec, said that Cleary "was never a part of LulzSec or in fact the subcrew." No further suspects have been uncovered by the authorities.
