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FBI Arrests LulzSec and Anonymous Hackers
Velcroman1 writes "The FBI arrested two alleged members of the hacking collectives LulzSec and Anonymous on Thursday morning in San Francisco and Phoenix. Search warrants were also being executed in New Jersey, Minnesota and Montana, an FBI official told FoxNews.com. A document purported to come from the FBI leaked online earlier this month called these hacker groups a national security threat. One individual was described as part of the LulzSec group, the other belongs to the group that calls itself Anonymous, the official said. The suspected hacker arrested in California is homeless and alleged to have been involved in the hacking of Santa Cruz County government websites."
first post ?
Congratulations! You win a misguided sense of pride!
Their desire for freedom must go unheard. Preserve our plutocracy.
I can hear it now. They are political prisoners!
Hi Dave!
Did anyone not see this coming? Even after the last round of arrests, folks somehow assumed the rest of them were in the clear...
Tonight we get to hear from our security expert why the FBI website has gone down. More at six.
There is nothing of greater threat to national security than a HOMELESS hacker. Though I guess it is good as any excuse to get such riff-raft off the curbs. Why just the other day I saw this homeless person and immediately thought; you know, that person is probably a real threat to my countries security and needs FBI involvement to justify their jailing.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
I would have thought being homeless was a pretty darn good evasion method.
I suppose it's more of a living with a friend and not paying rent kinda thing. Article gives no further information that I can see.
How they know the homeless guy did it, yes I know its not impossible for people to get on a computer, but unless the guy had a freaking home office in his box its probably going to be on shared computers
this will be interesting when there is more than a 1 paragraph blurb
HOMELESS == on the street/in the gutter.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
And the silly idjots thot their conversations were private ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It's a good thing the FBI is swatting at these gnats, diverting resources from investigating Chinese hacking, rampant industrial espionage, or the ubiquitous banking fraud. Fantastic work, G-men! You're making us proud.
He got caught because he REGISTERED his username on the internet. This breaks rule #1 of the internet, what's posted cannot be unposted.
I was reading the court indictment wondering if they were somehow able to trace a proxy after the fact of use, which with something like TOR is quite the feat, but no, dude signed up to hidemyass.com, used the SAME user name, and thus will now meet Bubba in prison. Ah, the world of hacking, a mistake, and its your ass.
Yeah, that's part of the hilarity with these lulsec/anonymous kids. They keep picking fights with ginormously powerful entities which would not think twice about tossing them into small cells at the bottom of a deep holes, yet they seem to feel these Death Star Agencies and Corporations will back off due to the punks' mad skillz with internet servers.
In Chicago, they call that "bringing a knife to a gun fight."
Guess I shouldn't expect much better from Fox News.
Captcha was "wiretaps".
If national security can be threatened by Anonymous or Lulz, it seems to me we don't have much in the way of national security.
Dave's not here man.
Is it just me, or does this seem to be ramping up into the latest excuse for abuse of detention powers? The jackboots-in-charge need SOMETHING now that the labels "communist", "child pornographer", "terrorist", and "leaker" have long since been debunked.
So it looks like "anonymous/lulzsec" is the latest one.
In the article, on the last page of the indictment, the foreperson is signed as "/s/"
I know "/b" is the virtual home of Anonymous, but never knew that "Beautiful Sexy Women" was filled with so much government powers. Explains a lot, actually...
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
What most likely happened is that these guys were arrested by IP because of a DoS attack they participated in after wich investigators found proof of other hacks on their computer.
No, thats not what homeless means. Homeless means you dont have a permenant residence-- you could be at a shelter, or moving from friend's house to friend's house, or you could be "on the streets", or any number of other possibilities.
Seeing as hackers tend to need internet access, Im guessing its one of the first two.
Shut up Dave. Oh balls, this is my accdf9-g5%6m [CARRIER LOST] OK? There. The joke ends here.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
That is not what homeless commonly means in the US.
he just doesnt want them to find the server farm
Pixels keep you awake!
Where can you plug your notebook in on the street?
What then? Unable to support oneself, and sleeping under an underpass, or maybe in a shelter somewhere? Or is it possible in America where words don't always mean what they seem, that homeless people own/rent homes?
"We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us." :)
- The FBI's new slogan
No, the point is it is funny. That is it. Anonymous is in it for the lulz. If some of the horde gets taken out nobody really cares.
Also "LulzSec" are actually pretty terrible at hacking. Most of it is really low rent exploits and social engineering which is why it is so amusing how much "damage" they have caused. The only thing that makes them a cut above a thousand other minor hackers is that they are publicising it, which is exactly the best way to piss the corporations off. They don't care that much about the intrusions, just that their customers are finding out how unsafe these "trusted" companies are.
P.S. The real dangerous hackers live in non-extradition countries and have thugs with guns at hand. They aren't scared of the FBI.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Homeless does not necessarily mean on the street. It could also mean "of no fixed address". Someone who couch surfs among a group of friends every few days or weeks is considered "homeless" but still has a place to stay and an internet connection to use.
I dunno, reading some of the "Anonymous" releases makes me think they believe they can actually change the world by what they are doing. They get pretty lofty and poetic for being in it strictly "for teh lulz". Not that it wasn't funny/important/damning what they did, but eliciting social change? History will decide, and take a while to do so.
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
As I pointed out in a post to the last thread on the topic:
1. All documents will have a clear sender and a clear recipient (or set of recipients) that reflect themselves in the way the document is written.
2. One of the more notable ways the sender and recipient are reflected is in what knowledge the document builds on (for the sender) and presumes exist in the recipient.
3. Even in the extremely unlikely situation that the sender really is some kind of separate FBI technogeek cave there was no identifiable recipient based on the presumed-knowledge theory - apart from the average teenage 4channer who think himself intelligent but is scared of the cops. No conceivable broad external group of FBI agents can exist that have the knowledge presumed of the so-called FBI recipients.
Yes, the document presumed the knowledge of, and was addressed to, 4chan. No FBI involved. I would hope this should be evident to anyone who reads it.
"He who lulz last, lulz best"
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I guess we can all sleep at night now. They finally brought these 2 heinous groups down. Who'd have thought they were hiding in plain sight on the streets of LA?!?! Good work FBI... now you can focus on more important crimes like people downloading music and such.
'Homeless' is not the opposite of 'homeowner'. Renters for example, are not 'homeless'.
At least not in the US.
That's because when you get ten Anonymous together, you'll have twelve different opinions. The media will (of course) cite the most newsworthy sounding statements, not "I'm just bored" or "I wonder whether we can take 'em down".
Is nobody embarassed by the fact that the website of a big organization can be affected by something as simple as an SQL injection?
I've searched many of the other major news agency websites including the AP, BBC, CBS, NBC, and CNN. I have not been able to find this story anywhere else which doesn't mean that it is not true but that it may be that Fox took a few liberties with the story or that they have some secret insider at the FBI. Here in Minneapolis I've checked the Star tribune which is a good source of local MN news and the only thing it has is about how a police officer shot an woman who displayed an handgun during a traffic stop on a major freeway. Now that seems to be a bit more news worthy than some homeless guy in Cali that allegedly, and is 100% innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, was involved or knew of attacks on some corporation. Unfortunately I've found that I just can't take News Corps word on a story until I have read the accounts from at least 2 other news agencies.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
Our government really does not need to get into opposition with a pile of skilled hackers. The hackers may well win. Further the revelations released by outfits like Wikileaks seem to offer far more good than bad to the American public. Maybe we can get past the point where we have people in government who do nothing but lie and spread manure to foreign governments. Why not simply make government completely transparent. Are we to really believe that our nation can only exist if we lie, sneak about and betray? We have way too much nonsense in the name of supposed national security.
I know you're a big fat liar cause I'm Dave
-Dave
P.S. The real dangerous hackers live in China and have thugs with guns at hand. They aren't scared of the FBI.
There, fixed that for you ^_^
I don't think hackers means what you think it means.
Yours is the most intelligent comment so far, and spot on.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Internet access is available here via the public library. Electricity is also available at no charge.
I can only guess that the same situation exists elsewhere.
These scum posted thousands of stolen passwords. It is reported pay p@l accounts were compromised. How loudly you would cry if the acts of these criminals lead to your identity theft. Thank you FBI!
Chinese hackers mainly mess with sites that criticize China, or try to steal IP. The real *criminal* hackers who steal lots of money and valuables are found in Russia, Belarus, the Ukraine...
In Chicago, they call that "bringing a knife to a gun fight."
I once took my wife to a bun fight, does that count?
uhhhhh.... how does habeas corpus work for someone called " anonymous "?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Except in boolean logic.
Open the pod bay doors Hal... Cuz Dave IS here!
ok...we're gonna make these easy for you. If you keep refusing to force it out naturally, we're may have to use The Instant Nuke...make no mistake, its no gentle gentle "Care Bear" laxative. Ant thats being nice. You don't wanna know about the PNF (Probe Named Fang)....
i still have a hard time being convinced that the FBI actually capture the correct people. i mean, if i were a hacker i would go to great lengths to make everything point to someone else. likely another hacker whom i dont get along with. of course, all of those indications would appear like that person attempted to hide themselves - to make it seem more likey. ans short of having a hardware keylogger on the suspects machine where the commands used to perform the attacks originated from, i can't see how they ever prove that wasn't the case.
I routinely get modded down for this, due to the particular fairly blinkered "pro-cracktivist" attitude at Facebook. The old notion that "disagreeing with something is not a valid reason to mod someone down" goes completely out the window on this issue. But the Anonymous/LulzSec "hacktivists" are actually criminals and should be investigated and arrested if found.
Sometimes their intentions have been relatively "noble", other times it has seemed to be mainly for the lulz. In any case, society does not accept vigilantism, whether it is on-line or on the streets.
The "The police must have something better to do"-attitude is also unhelpful and unrealistic. This would imply that the police should always go after the biggest cases and criminals leaving every small crime unsolved, even though you sometimes can't fix the big issues and the small issues sometimes grow into bigger issues later on. Just like in software development, sometimes you have to fix the easy, low-hanging fruit. It is also not like the FBI dropped everything else just to get LulzSec.
Now, I can agree with the notion that they may well get overly shafted from this. But they knew the risks, and some of them have caused millions of pounds of damages (*). At times like this I'd like to quote the Libertines: "they boy kicked out at the world, the world kicked back a lot fucking harder" and the Feds are just about to kick back quite fucking hard.
(*) I'm sure I'll get responses saying someone else would have done worse if LulzSec/Anonymous didn't get there first. Perhaps, but that doesn't excuse them.
They are charging him with "causing intentional damage to a protected computer." But since he did it in coordination with others, they can add the "conspiracy to" charge as well.
Conspiracy is also used when people are planning a crime, and there is clear evidence of such, but they haven't yet commited the crime. If you don't like this concept, maybe you'd rather the police sit back and let a group plotting to kill you do it so the prosecutor can get actual murder charges instead of just conspiracy to murder.
No, They are scared of the CIA.
You have no idea what words mean. You believe the term "homeless" may apply to the renting population and not just to the people who have absolutely nowhere to call 'home'. Have you ever even been in an urban environment? Your knowledge of both the rental market and the homeless population indicates "no".
You're completely pathetic.
That's just bullshit to justify/rationalize what they are doing.
Believe all that as much as you believe a financial analyst on why today's market went up/down.
So, a couple of small time vandals got arrested. The movement with which they are loosely affiliated is generally considered to be a national security threat. This doesn't mean that every single person is individually a security threat.. this means that a group of people getting organized to disrupt the military and government through cybercrime is a threat. This a big concept to swallow for reactionaries. If one person running down a street breaks a window, then he is a vandal. If a thousand people are running down the street breaking windows, then you have a riot-- and a riot is extremely dangerous. The drug trade is a national security threat. Some hippie who gets stoned and writes Ruby on Rails code while generating bitcoins on his hacked PS3 is not a national security threat-- yet the drug trade as a whole has elevated street criminals to royal status and nearly collapsed the Mexican government. When a politician lies about his personal life, he is dishonest. When he lies about policy, his intentions, and virtually everything else, then he is insidious and anti-social.
Arresting people and holding them accountable for the smaller crimes they commit is a necessary step toward maintaining a peaceful and safe society. If people believed they could do anything they wanted on the internet, even if it is disruptive, expensive, and widely coercive to others, then the activity would exacerbate and the people who would be victimized would feel unsafe. The same is true with hate crimes, rape, or theft. Degenerate people will do whatever they can get away with for attention, out of spite, or just because they feel vindicated by some perceived threat from society at large.
The FBI is extinguishing a lit wastebasket in an effort to prevent-- not directly but conceptually-- a forest fire, yet this forced narrative seems to suggest that they are calling the wastebasket fire a forest fire. There is no indication that they are.
What's funny is that when Anon succeeds in hacking, it is a political win for the underdogs and an unleashing of the voice of freedom; but when Anon fails and has a setback, it is just for lulz and no big deal. When one's mission goals are so vacillating, it's no wonder no one takes them seriously.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
FBI Feeble Bozo's Inside
I think we're all bozos on this bust.
Your feeble mind can't process the difference between the colloquial meaning of homeless and the literal meaning. You are literally a child when it comes to parsing statements. You're completely pathetic.