Lulz Security hacker arrested in eastern England

[News_Editor]

Lulz Security hacker arrested in eastern England

2011-06-21 23:58:58 GMT+7 (ICT)

ESSEX (BNO NEWS) -- British police on late Monday evening arrested a teenager suspected of being part of hacking group Lulz Security, which has claimed responsibility for cyber attacks on Sony, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and other websites.

Scotland Yard said the 19-year-old man, who was locally identified as Ryan Cleary, was arrested on Monday evening at his home in Wickford, a town in the south of the English county of Essex. He was later taken to a central London police station for questioning, where he remains in custody.

"Searches at a residential address in Wickford, Essex, following the arrest last night have led to the examination of a significant amount of material. These forensic examinations remain ongoing," a spokesperson for Scotland Yard said. He is being held on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act and Fraud Act offences.

Although some reports described Cleary as the 'mastermind' behind Lulz Security, the hacking group denied this on their Twitter account. "Seems the glorious leader of LulzSec got arrested, it's all over now... wait... we're all still here! Which poor bastard did they take down?" one post said.

According to police, the arrest was carried out by the Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) after an investigation into network intrusions and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against a number of international businesses and intelligence agencies. The agency conducted its operation in co-operation with Essex Police and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

A DDoS attack is a low level attack that uses readily accessible malware and requires minimal knowledge. In essence, it consists of exhausting the resources of a web server such that it becomes unavailable to legitimate users.

For example, if a web server is designed to service 100 simultaneous users and an attacker can get 200 computers to simultaneously and constantly request pages from the server, then the server becomes overloaded and legitimate users are locked out through overloading the server and/or congesting the connection to the server.

The attack is distributed in nature meaning it originates from many computers, often under remote malware control, each making a small number of requests. As a result it is difficult to distinguish the attack from legitimate internet traffic.

On Monday, both Lulz Security and Anonymous - another notorious hacking group - announced they would continue together. "To increase efforts, we are now teaming up with the Anonymous collective and all affiliated battleships," Lulz Security said in a statement posted to pastebin.com.

It added: "Whether you're sailing with us or against us, whether you hold past grudges or a burning desire to sink our lone ship, we invite you to join the rebellion. Together we can defend ourselves so that our privacy is not overrun by profiteering gluttons. Your hat can be white, gray or black, your skin and race are not important. If you're aware of the corruption, expose it now, in the name of Anti-Security."

Lulz Security has claimed responsibility for cyber attacks against Sony, PBS, the U.S. Senate, the CIA, and other websites. Most recently, the group targeted Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency.

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