FBI arrests 6 -- Anonymous Sold Out by One of Its Own

A member of the infamous Anonymous-LulzSec hacker groups, Hector Monsegur, known as Sabu, appears to be the primary snitch in the arrest of five other members of LulzSec announced by the FBI  this week.

Last year, on July 19th, the FBI announced the arrest of 16 individuals in Europe and the U.S. for cyber attacks. At that time the FBI published all the names but one. In its statement at the time the FBI said, “one individual’s name has been withheld by the court.” That individual was none other than Hector Monsegur.

The arrests last summer and this week continue the international crackdown on Anonymous and its confederation of hackers which include not only “LulzSec”, but “Internet Feds", and AntiSec,” according to the FBI.

Monsegur plead guilty last August to a 12-count indictment. The indictment was only unsealed this week. The guilty pleas included admissions that he helped hack into Sony Pictures, Fox Broadcasting, and PBS broadcasting among others.

One of those arrested this week, John Hammond, known among hackers by various names including “sup_g”, “Anarchaos”, “burn”, “yoyhoho” and many more, was charged in the well known hack of global intelligence company, Strategic Forecasting, known by its nickname, Stratfor. The Stratfor attack affected the privacy of over 800,000 individuals, according to the FBI.

 Despite all the high profile and damaging hacks that have taken place over the last several years, what is probably the FBI and Scotland Yard’s proudest moment is the arrest of Ryan Ackroyd who was identified as the hacker who obtained the conference call number and password to a recent meeting of international law enforcement officials. The conference call was subsequently recorded by Anonymous and published on YouTube causing a great deal of embarrassment to both police organizations..

 As expected there is and will probably be a backlash from the various hacker groups to the arrests.

 A message left on YouTube-- while the video plays ominous music in the background-- said in part,

 “Hello We Are Anonymous we have formed a hacktivist Voltron to strike back against international police efforts to arrest our brothers; hacked the police. It's a war, now. And we've developed a war-room style video of Antisecec's history. In a sting called operation "Shooting Sherrifs Saturday," LulzSec and Anonymous have published a cache of 10GB of private data grabbed from police servers. The move was in retaliation for arrests of alleged LulzSec and Anonymous hackers--most prominently a young chap from Scotland who the British police maintain is LulzSec key figure "Topiary." We are with you!”

 According to news reports the group may use “entrapment” as their defense. Only last week Monsegur sent this tweet to his fellow hackers..

 “Hackers of the world: Interpol has declared war on hackers. Organizing arrests in South America and Europe. Time to strike back. Infiltrate,” certainly an odd tweet to be made by an FBI informant.

 If proven guilty the defendants face hundreds of years of prison time.