Lulzsec ‘glorious leader’ arrested

Having worked with the FBI, Scotland Yard announced the arrest of a 19-year old, Ryan Cleary. The arrest is notable as it is believed to be in connection with attacks on businesses and government agencies including the CIA, US Senate and Sony, by hacker group Lulzsec.

Cleary, was detained on Monday at a house in the suburban town of Wickford in Essex, in connection with a month-long global rampage by the Lulzsec.

He was being questioned Tuesday at a central London police station. A police source was widely quoted as saying they believed this to be a “significant arrest”.

But on a Lulzsec Twitter account, which has previously proved to be credible, the arrest was played down.

In a statement, Scotland Yard said its specialist cyber-crime team had arrested the man in a “pre-planned intelligence-led operation” on suspicion of computer misuse and fraud offences. “The arrest follows an investigation into network intrusions and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against a number of international businesses and intelligence agencies by what is believed to be the same hacking group”.

“Searches at a residential address in Wickford, Essex, following the arrest last night have led to the examination of a significant amount of material. These forensic examinations remain ongoing,” the statement said.

British police had been “working in cooperation with the FBI” in the run-up to the arrest, it added.

Cleary’s mother speaking with the BBC, said that her son had been arrested and said that since he was 12 years old “computers were his world.”

The latest in a series of hacking groups to gain public prominence, Lulz claimed responsibility for having knocked out the CIA’s public website, cia.gov, for about two hours last week. LulzSec also claimed to have been responsible for a hack into the US Senate’s public website.

The group has also released tens of thousands of user names and passwords stolen from Sony and other sites, and on Monday targeted the website of Britain’s Serious Organised Crime Agency. British authorities said Tuesday they were investigating whether information from the country’s 2011 national census had been hacked.

“We are aware of the suggestion that census data has been accessed. We are working with our security advisers and contractors to establish whether there is any substance to this,” the Office of National Statistics said in a statement.

But the LulzSec Twitter account later said it was not responsible, adding it had been the victim of a hoax statement.

In an online manifesto posted last week, LulzSec — whose name is a derivative of the text shorthand for LOL — said they were staging the attacks for their own entertainment.

“You find it funny to watch havoc unfold, and we find it funny to cause it,” it said. “For the past month and a bit, we’ve been causing mayhem and chaos throughout the Internet, attacking several targets including PBS, Sony, Fox, porn websites, FBI, CIA, the US government, Sony some more, online gaming servers,” Lulz said.

LulzSec last week denied reports that it was in conflict with the hacker group Anonymous, which gained notoriety last year with cyberattacks in support of controversial whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

However in May, Anonymous posted Ryan Cleary’s personal details on the Internet after accusing him of trying to hack into its chatrooms. — AFP