The ‘Lulz’ are over: Lulzsec calls it quits

Following an internet rampage which ranged from the silly — defacing a news site to show that TuPac, famed US rapper, was alive — to the serious — attacks on key US government sites, including the CIA, Lulzsec has announced that it is closing up shop.

In a document loaded to Pastebin, then linked in a tweet through what has come to be viewed as the group’s official Twitter account, Lulzsec announced that after 50 days of Lulz, the game was over.

The statement went on to say:

We are Lulz Security, and this is our final release, as today marks something meaningful to us. 50 days ago, we set sail with our humble ship on an uneasy and brutal ocean: the Internet. The hate machine, the love machine, the machine powered by many machines. We are all part of it, helping it grow, and helping it grow on us. For the past 50 days we’ve been disrupting and exposing corporations, governments, often the general population itself, and quite possibly everything in between, just because we could.

Concluding, the message stated. “We must now sail into the distance.”

Included in the statement is information which would be of interest to law enforcement authorities, particularly the claim that Lulzsec was comprised of just six members.

Law enforcement has also borne the brunt of Lulz attacks with the latest coming just two days before the statement’s release.

Whilst the statement has an air of finality to it, stating that from the moment Lulzsec began its campaign of “selflessly entertaining others”, it had been a “planned 50 day cruise”, there were also oblique references to the possibility of the group returning under another guise: “While we are responsible for everything that The Lulz Boat is, we are not tied to this identity permanently”.

Regardless of whether Lulzsec truly has ceased functioning, it can be safely assumed that law enforcement officials worldwide will continue their search for them.

A few days prior to the 50 day statement, in what UK authourities believe was a “significant arrest”, a 19yr old British youth was arrested and charged for alleged links to Lulz-attacks. However LulzSec rubbished the arrest, referring to the arrested youth, Ryan Clearly, as a “poor bastard”.

The statement announcing the end of Lulzsec makes no mention of a scathing attack LulzSec bore at the hands of a rival hacking group, also just a few days prior to the statement.

Speaking with Fox News in an exclusive interview, Hex0010, whom Fox identified as a 23-year-old member of TeaMp0isoN said of LulzSec, “We (TeaMp0isoN) are here to show the world that they’re nothing but a bunch of script kiddies”. Continuing to pour scorn on LulzSec, Hex0010 was also quoted as saying, “You think, ‘I’m a badass hacker because I can knock someone offline for a few a minutes’ that’s bullsh*t”.

TeaMp0isoN[sic] — stating 2006 as the year it was established — is a far older group and has been upset at the widely reported successes enjoyed by newer groups such as LulzSec. Furthermore, TeaMp0isoN, is of the opinion that groups such as LulzSec are inferior to it as they have no “skills”, and take issue with what the report refers to as “push-button software packages” in taking down websites.

According to Hex0010, TeaMp0ison had, at the time of the Fox interview, already exposed the identity of one LulzSec member and would continue in its quest to expose the rest. The purportedly identified member of LulzSec; however, denied being affiliated with the hacking group.

Following the LulzSec statement, Hex0010, who tweets from a TeaMp0isoN Twitter account, took responsibility for LulzSec’s decision to retire. He then went on to remind people of TeaMp0isoN’s lleaking of former UK PM Tony Blair’s personal address book a few days prior.

Despite no longer being part of the rising popularity of what is becoming to be known as “hacktivism”, LulzSec, which had always maintained that it had no political affiliations or goals stressed their support of the “AntiSec (anti-security) movement“. In the latest tweets from their account, they encouraged any future AntiSec enthusiasts to join in the Anonymous movement.