Lulz Security hacker group said Saturday that it has ended an Internet rampage that included cyberattacks on videogame companies, police, and even a US spy agency website.<\/p>\n
“For the past 50 days we’ve been disrupting and exposing corporations, governments, often the general population itself, and quite possibly everything in between, just because we could,” the group said in a message uploaded to The Pirate Bay file sharing website.<\/p>\n
“It is time to say bon voyage,” the message concluded. “We must now sail into the distance.”<\/p>\n
The Lulz farewell contended that the group had a crew of six people and implied the plan from the outset was for the hacking campaign to last 50 days.<\/p>\n
While it remained to be seen whether members of the group would truly stop bedeviling the Internet, it was unlikely police would abandon efforts to track them down.<\/p>\n
Lulz Security has claimed responsibility for hacking websites of the CIA, US Senate, Sony and others.<\/p>\n
The group on Thursday released hundreds of documents from the Arizona Department of Public Safety in their latest cyberattack.<\/p>\n
Lulz Security, or LulzSec, provided a link to the more than 700 documents on their website, LulzSecurity.com. The group said it was protesting Arizona’s immigration laws.<\/p>\n
The documents include information on drug cartels, street gangs, informants, border patrol operations and the names and addresses of members of the Arizona Highway Patrol.<\/p>\n
Lulz Security said in a message at the time that it planned to release more classified police or military documents weekly.<\/p>\n
“Behind the mask, behind the insanity and mayhem, we truly believe in the AntiSec (anti computer security) movement,” Lulz Security said.<\/p>\n
A British teenager suspected of involvement with the Lulz Security hacking spree has been remanded in police custody in London.<\/p>\n
Ryan Cleary, 19, was arrested on Monday [20 June 2011] at his home in Wickford, southeast England, as part of a probe by Scotland Yard and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into Lulz Security.<\/p>\n
British police on Wednesday charged Cleary with targeting the website of Britain’s Serious Organized Crime Agency — the British equivalent of the FBI — with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.<\/p>\n
DDoS attacks overwhelm websites with requests, causing them to be slow or inaccessible.<\/p>\n
Lulz Security has staged a number of DDoS attacks on websites, including that of the CIA, but the group has also carried out a number of large-scale data thefts.<\/p>\n