LulzSec Scorns Anti-Hacking Investigations

 

 As part of a cyber-war against government and businesses, the goal was to "steal and leak" any classified information, including emails and documents "from banks and other high-ranking establishments," LulzSec wrote in a manifesto posted on text-sharing site PasteBin. Participants were encouraged to deface Websites with the word "AntiSec." If the group gets censored, the group said it will "obliterate" the censor.

"Stop fearing three-letter agencies, friends. They're humans with slightly more paper and fancier uniforms; they are just like you and me," LulzSec posted on Twitter on June 19.

LulzSec followed up on its earlier attack against InfraGard in Atlanta with another one on InfraGard in Connecticut and carried off information belonging to more than 1,000 FBI-affiliated members.

The group also knocked the United Kingdom's Serious Organized Crime Agency's Website offline with a distributed denial of service attack. SOCA took the site offline to limit the impact of the DDOS attack on other clients hosted by the third-party service provider, an agency official told BBC News. However, the attack was minimal as the site doesn't contain any data from its investigations.

While there were claims that LulzSec had hacked and stolen the United Kingdom's 2011 census, the group denied it.  "That wasn't us-don't believe fake LulzSec releases unless we put out a tweet first," the group said on Twitter.

"One had to wonder if all of this bragging could lead to the group's downfall. It would, after all, be hard to keep a secret from friends and peers if you were a member of LulzSec," Culely wrote on the NakedSecurity blog.

LulzSec's Anti-Sec partner, Anonymous, is a loose federation of hackers that has launched distributed denial of service attacks against government Websites as well as major brand companies in the past to protest censorship. Anonymous launched the DDOS attacks against Sony, which coincided with the Sony data breach as unknown attackers compromised the PlayStation Network, Qriocity music and video service and Sony Online Entertainment.

LulzSec seems to be a spinoff from Anonymous, Imperva's Rob Rachwald wrote on the Data Security blog on June 19. According to lead Web researcher Tal Be'ery, LulzSec may have been the faction of Anonymous that hacked HBGary Federal in February and Gawker late last year. LulzSec may have decided to create its own "gig" to be independent, Be'ery said.

LulzSec attacks services and Websites "just because we find it entertaining. You find it funny to watch havoc unfold, and we find it funny to cause it. We release personal data so that equally evil people can entertain us with what they do with it," LulzSec said.