

It announced its exploits via Twitter and its own website, often accompanied with lighthearted ASCII art drawings of boats. The group used the motto "Laughing at your security since 2011!" and its website, created in June 2011, played the theme from The Love Boat. Members of the group may have been involved in a previous attack against the security firm HBGary. Several media sources have described their tactics as grey hat hacking. It used well-known straightforward methods, such as SQL injection, to attack its target websites. It specialized in finding websites with poor security, stealing and posting information from them online. The group emerged in May 2011, and successfully attacked websites of several major corporations. It frequently referred to Internet memes when defacing websites. It gained attention in part due to its brazen claims of responsibility and lighthearted taunting of corporations that were hacked. The Wall Street Journal characterized its attacks as closer to Internet pranks than serious cyber-warfare, while the group itself claimed to possess the capability of stronger attacks. LulzSec drew its name from the neologism " lulz", (from lol), "laughing out loud", which represents laughter, and "Sec", short for "Security".

They claimed to do so because the rapper Common had been referred to as "vile" on air. It claimed responsibility for leaking information, including passwords, altering several employees' LinkedIn profiles, and leaking a database of X Factor contestants containing contact information of 73,000 contestants. The group's first recorded attack was against Fox.com's website, though they still may have been using the name Internet Feds at the time.

In May 2011, following the publicity surrounding the HBGary hacks, six members of Internet Feds founded the group LulzSec. This includes the alleged incident in which e-mail messages were stolen from HBGary accounts. Under this name, the group attacked websites belonging to Fine Gael, HBGary, and Fox Broadcasting Company. The group had also helped launch Operation AntiSec, a joint effort involving LulzSec, Anonymous, and other hackers.Ī federal indictment against members contends that, prior to forming the hacking collective known as LulzSec, the six members were all part of another collective called Internet Feds, a group in rivalry with Anonymous. Despite claims of retirement, the group committed another hack against newspapers owned by News Corporation on 18 July, defacing them with false reports regarding the death of Rupert Murdoch. Their final release included accounts and passwords from many different sources. The sudden disbandment of the group was unexpected. Prior, British authorities had announced the arrests of two teenagers they alleged were LulzSec members, going by the pseudonyms T-flow and Topiary.Īt just after midnight ( BST, UT+01) on 26 June 2011, LulzSec released a "50 days of lulz" statement, which they claimed to be their final release, confirming that LulzSec consisted of six members, and that their website was to be shut down. At least four associates of LulzSec were arrested in March 2012 as part of this investigation. He later helped law enforcement track down other members of the organization as part of a plea deal. One of the founders of LulzSec was computer security specialist Hector Monsegur, who used the online moniker Sabu. It has gained attention due to its high profile targets and the sarcastic messages it has posted in the aftermath of its attacks.
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Some security professionals have commented that LulzSec has drawn attention to insecure systems and the dangers of password reuse. The group also claimed responsibility for taking the CIA website offline. LulzSec (a contraction for Lulz Security) was a black hat computer hacking group that claimed responsibility for several high profile attacks, including the compromise of user accounts from PlayStation Network in 2011.
