LulzSec Makes Enemies of Fellow Hackers, Pretends Not to Care
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| Image composite by SecurityNewsDaily |
The hacking group LulzSec has made plenty of headlines in the past few weeks, but it's also made plenty of enemies in the hacking community.
Rival hackers are circling LulzSec, mocking its skills and doing their best to expose its members.
Despite these threats, and the mounting police attention that's already seen one affiliate member arrested , a key LulzSec member said an interview Thursday that he's not scared.
Among the hits LulzSEc has taken:
- Early Friday morning, the official LulzSec website (which plays the "Love Boat" theme) was temporarily knocked offline by a rival hacker calling himself "Oneiroi."
- A group calling itself the Web Ninjas last week created a blog called LulzSec Exposed, posting the names and photos of whom they believe are the group's leaders.
- Another group called Team Poison derided LulzSec's hacking skills, calling them amateurs and wanna-be's. They hacked the homepage of a suspected LulzSec member.
- And a dissenting LulzSec member apparently leaked chat-room discussions among the various members. The Web Ninjas posted a few excerpts; the British newspaper the Guardian posted several days' worth.
Hacking for good
LulzSec's most dedicated antagonist is a one-man army known as The Jester, or as he prefers it, "th3j35t3r." He's a self-described "hacktivist for good" with sympathies for the U.S. military, and was responsible for knocking the WikiLeaks site offline last fall.
The Jester also has a blog where he's posted lots of intriguing details about the members of LulzSec, including purported real names and locations.
We'll leave out the real names, since all of these people could be wrong, but the core members are the same individuals named by defectors from Anonymous a couple of months ago.
The leader is thought to be a Brazilian man, aged about 30, who goes by the handle "Sabu." Other chief members are a Swede called "Topiary," an American called "Nakomis" and a Dutchman called "Joepie91," all thought to be in their late teens or 20s.
A fifth member, called "Kayla," may be the sole woman and sole member under 18, though past reports have said she is really an American man in his 20s.
Most of them were named as leaders of the supposedly leaderless Anonymous hacktivist movement in March, before LulzSec emerged as a separate group.
Kayla is credited with hacking into the mail servers of HBGary Federal in March, which exposed the security company's legally dubious plans to use disinformation and malware on behalf of corporate clients.
Often also named is Barrett Brown, a Texan in his late 20s who was formerly an unofficial spokeman for Anonymous. He has started his own group dedicated to delving deeper into the military-security secrets unearthed by the HBGary breach.
(Brown, who does not use a pseudonym and makes himself easy to reach, has been a source for several SecurityNewsDaily stories. He denies being a member of LulzSec.)
Chasing ghosts
Topiary, who authors the witty LulzSec Twitter postings, gave a surprise interview to the gossip blog Gawker Thursday.
Speaking to Gawker via Skype, Topiary dismissed the threats to LulzSec from police and fellow hackers, and mocked the news media for sensationalizing the arrest of English teenager Ryan Cleary on Tuesday.
"The mass media are clueless and have spun 'LulzSec leader' out of their own asses," Topiary said. "There are no facts to support that Ryan is related to LulzSec."
He labeled the Jester, Web Ninjas and Team Poison as "lonely people that are programmed to feel that they need an enemy at all times. If we're out of their lives, they don't have much going for them."
Asked if he was worried about being caught by the authorities, Topiary had a simple response: "Worrying is for fools!"
Sabu tweeted a similar sentiment Friday evening.
"You know what's the joke on everyone?" Sabu wrote. "If we simply changed our pseudonyms we essentially disappear. You're all chasing ghosts."
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