Dissolution of Hacker Group Might Not End Attacks
By RIVA RICHMOND and NICK BILTON
Published: June 26, 2011
Facing increasing pressure from law enforcement agencies over its brazen computer attacks, the small group of hackers known as Lulz Security announced over the weekend that it would disband.
Associated Press
But security experts said on Sunday that the dissolution of the group might not signal an end to the attacks, which have hit dozens of Web sites, including those of prominent targets like the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States Senate, the Arizona state police and Sony.
Indeed, in its farewell message posted on Saturday, the group, also known as LulzSec, urged other hackers to join the “revolution” aimed at governments and corporations that it started recently with Anonymous, a much larger collective of politically minded hackers from which many of the LulzSec members sprung.
“It looks like these sort of ‘hacktivist’ ideas are spreading and gaining popularity,” said Dino A. Dai Zovi, a prominent independent security consultant. He said that LulzSec appeared to be trying to inspire others to join a sprawling, if fragmented, array of local groups, which could feed more attacks.
In recent weeks, LulzSec has become a target itself, as global law enforcement authorities and rival hackers have gone after the group. One man associated with LulzSec, Ryan Cleary, was arrested last week in Britain. Meanwhile, a growing assemblage of rival hackers has been working to unmask the core half-dozen LulzSec members and feed information on them to the authorities.
American officials on Sunday characterized the attacks carried out by LulzSec as “nuisances” rather than real security threats. One government official said that LulzSec had never penetrated government servers or stolen any classified information.
“What we are really worried about is people getting access to our systems, or putting malware on it,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Read More...http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/technology/27hack.html
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