Anonymous, LulzSec Case In U.S. Expanded By Feds

Expanded indictment against Anonymous, LulzSec leaders now includes Jeremy Hammond, accused of masterminding hacktivist attacks against Arizona police and Stratfor websites.

Anonymous: 10 Facts About The Hacktivist Group (click image for larger view and for slideshow)
A federal grand jury has handed down a superseding indictment in the case against alleged LulzSec and Anonymous leaders that adds a sixth person to the list of people charged.
The revised indictment now lists Jeremy Hammond (a.k.a. Anarchaos, burn, POW, ghost, and anarchaker, amongst other aliases) as a defendant, and accuses him of participating in LulzSec and Anonymous hacks involving the websites of the
Arizona Department of Public Safety
(DPS), as well as
Stratfor
(a.k.a. Strategic Forecasting). An arraignment date for Hammond has yet to be scheduled.
The preceding indictment had
charged four men
--Ryan Ackroyd (a.k.a. kayla, lol, lolspoon), Jake Davis (a.k.a. topiary, atopiary), Darren Martyn (a.k.a. pwnsauce, raepsauce, networkkitten), and Donncha OCearrbhail (a.k.a. Palladium)--with hacking the websites of Fox Broadcasting Company, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). That indictment was unsealed in March 2012 in federal court. At the same time, Chicago-based Hammond was arrested on charges of participating in
AntiSec
, Anonymous, and LulzSec attacks, but he hadnt been named in the indictment.
[ The best defense is a good offense. See
Anonymous Vs. DNS System: Lessons For Enterprise IT
. ]
Admitted LulzSec leader Hector Xavier Monsegur
(a.k.a. Sabu), meanwhile, was charged in a separate, 12-count indictment, unsealed at the same time. According to court transcripts, Monsegur had been working as a government informer since he was arrested by the FBI on June 7, 2011, and helped authorities bust his former LulzSec and Anonymous colleagues.
According to the superseding indictment, Hammond led the June 2011 Arizona DPS attack, and around June 20, 2011, provided related data that hed stolen to Sabu, including over 100 documents labeled Law Enforcement Sensitive and hundreds of internal Arizona DPS documents relating to, among other things, officer safety issues, law enforcement techniques, and operational plans.
The indictment now accuses Hammond of masterminding the Stratfor attacks as well, which it said occurred between December 2011 and March 2012. According to the indictment, Hammond and other defendants stole approximately 60,000 credit card numbers--including cards security codes and expiration dates--as well as records for about 860,000 Stratfor clients, including their usernames, email addresses, and encrypted passwords.
According to court documents, furthermore, Hammond and other defendants used some of the stolen credit card data to make at least $700,000 worth of unauthorized charges. Stratfor, which bills itself as a global intelligence firm, would have been
violating PCI compliance guidelines
by storing complete credit card information.
According to the court documents, the Stratfor data was uploaded by Hammond and other defendants onto a server located in the Southern District of New York, which also happens to be the federal court district in which the indictment was handed down. Authorities said that Sabu--again, who was already working as a government informer-- provided
access to the server
to the defendants.
In related hacktivist news, Britains Serious Organized Crimes Agency (SOCA) website was hit late Wednesday with a
distributed denial-of-service attack
. The agency Thursday
confirmed to TechWeekEurope
that it had taken the website offline Wednesday night.
The reason we [took] it down is to prevent and limit any impact on the clients hosted by our service provider, according to a SOCA spokesperson. Clearly the things wed like to stress are that the SOCA website contains only publicly available information, it does not provide access to operational material.
SOCA has previously been targeted by Anonymous and LulzSec, in retaliation for the agency
investigating and arresting some members of the hacktivist collectives
. Notably, SOCA busted alleged LulzSec spokesman Jake Davis on five counts, including launching distributed denial-of-service attacks
against the SOCA website
. Earlier this year, meanwhile, according to one of the indictments unsealed in federal court in March, Irish citizen OCearrbhail was responsible for
intercepting an FBI conference call
involving members of SOCA.
Put an end to insider theft and accidental data disclosure with network and host controls--and dont forget to keep employees on their toes. Also in the new, all-digital
Stop Data Leaks
issue of Dark Reading: Why security must be everyones concern, and lessons learned from the Global Payments breach. (Free registration required.)

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Anonymous, LulzSec Case In U.S. Expanded By Feds