The FBI has struck a major blow against hacking groups after arresting or charging five key members of the LulzSec hacking crew and revealing that the head of the group, who went by the nickname "Sabu", has been working for it since the middle of 2011.
Hector Xavier Monsegur, known as Sabu, was charged with 12 criminal counts of conspiracy to engage in computer hacking and other crimes in court papers in Manhattan federal court.
Monsegur, an unemployed 28-year-old Puerto Rican living in New York, pleaded guilty to carrying out online attacks against PayPal and Mastercard, documents unsealed in a Manhattan court on Tuesday shows.
The charges were filed via a "criminal information" form, which means the suspect, Sabu, has likely been cooperating with the government.
Five other people – two in the UK, two in Ireland and one in Chicago – were either arrested or charged by the FBI on Tuesday.
LulzSec, a hacking crew of up to 10 people, and the hacking collective Anonymous have taken credit for carrying out a number of high-profile hacking actions against companies and institutions including the CIA, Britain's Serious Organized Crime Agency, Japan's Sony Corp and Mexican government websites.
But the explosive revelation that LulzSec's leader was cooperating with the FBI, even while he was claiming to hate the government, could lead to the arrest of other hackers within the broader Anonymous group.
It will also heighten distrust among the more powerful members of the collective – where paranoia about security always runs high anyway.
An FBI official was quoted by Fox News, which broke the story, as saying: "This is devastating to the organisation … we're chopping off the head of LulzSec."
LulzSec span out of Anonymous, the loose hacking collective, around the beginning of 2011, and engaged on a series of hacks into large and small organisations
But tensions within the group became evident from leaked chat logs published in June last year which showed Sabu, as the head of the group, struggling to maintain order as some members of the group worried that they had gone too far in attacking an FBI-affiliated site.
At that time, Sabu was still on the hackers' side – but according to Fox News, the FBI tracked him down, possibly with the help of information gathered by rival hackers such as The Jester, thought to be an ex-US military member who took against LulzSec and its objectives early on. He was one of a number of hackers who connected Sabu with Monsegur last year.
A key clue that Sabu might have been captured came last summer, when his Twitter feed – usually active almost around the clock – suddenly went quiet for roughly two months.
. Ah well, I'm just glad that these _______s are finally getting caught.
