Anonymous takes over as LulzSec sails off into sunset

Illustration: Rob Beschizza.

As noted on Boing Boing over the weekend, LulzSec has called it quits, amid increasing efforts by the FBI and other agencies to track them down—and amid a steady stream of doxing and leaked IRC logs by hacker foes. One LulzSec member told the AP they weren’t quitting because of pressure from law enforcement, but because they were “bored.”

After Friday’s release of Arizona law enforcement data, LulzSec left us with one last dump. AP:

[A] grab-bag of documents and login information apparently gleaned from gaming websites and corporate servers. The largest group of documents – 338 files – appears to be internal documents from AT&T Inc., detailing its buildout of a new wireless broadband network in the U.S. The network is set to go live this summer. A spokesman for the phone company could not immediately confirm the authenticity of the documents. In the Friday interview, the LulzSec member said the group was sitting on at least 5 gigabytes of government and law enforcement data from across the world, which it planned to release in the next three weeks. Saturday’s release was less than a tenth of that size.

Today, a Twitter account representing a portion of Anonymous claimed that “all @LulzSec members have reported aboard” to Anonymous, and that “all LulzSec members are accounted for, nobody is hiding. Only a name was abandoned for the greater glory.” The @AnonymousIRC account then also made various pronouncements about Brazil and Tunisia. Is everyone with a router and a copy of LOIC now Wikileaks?

Anonymous then leaked a “counter cyber-terrorism training file” and data from various US government sites. They torrented a file with data obtained during the past seven weeks, including hacked information from the CIA, senate.gov, and companies including AOL and Sony.

On Friday, LulzSec foes/rivals TeaMp0isoN posted what they claim was Tony Blair’s contacts list and other private details. In the past, they threatened to “dox” Lulz, and ridiculed the group on Twitter over the weekend: “See unlike @lulzsec, our movement dosent have an expiry date. . . . we wont ever backdown, this means a lot to us, time for a manifesto.” [sic]

So far, there’s been only one arrest in l’affaire LulzSec: Ryan Cleary, nabbed by UK police. His position with LulzSec isn’t entirely clear, but he is reported to have been developing brute-force attacks. He is a 19-year-old diagnosed with a Asperger’s syndrome, and has “difficulty interacting with people.” Despite what is apparently a debilitating case of Asperger’s that renders him with limited abilities to function outside of his home, he was denied bail.