We are anonymous inside the hacker world of lulzse

writes a spoof news article about the murdered rapper Tupac Shakur being found alive, publishing it through the PBS NewsHour website.
The group’s founders discuss forming a second-tier network of trusted supporters, many of them hacker friends of Sabu’s.
June 2, 2011—LulzSec announces its hack on SonyPictures.com and says that the group has compromised the personal information of
more than one million of the site’s users.
June 3, 2011—LulzSec defaces the website of Atlanta InfraGard, an FBI affiliate, and publishes a list of e-mails and passwords for 180
users of the site, some of whom are FBI agents.
June 6, 2011—LulzSec receives a donation of 400 Bitcoins, worth approximately $7,800 at the time.
June 7, 2011—Two FBI agents visit Hector “Sabu” Monsegur at his home in New York and threaten to imprison him for two years for
stealing credit card information if he does not cooperate. Monsegur agrees to become an informant while continuing to lead LulzSec.
June 8, 2011—The LulzSec hackers notice that Sabu has been offline for twenty-four hours and worry he has been “raided” by the FBI.
Later that night, U.K. time, Topiary makes contact with Sabu, who claims that his grandmother has died and that he will not be active with
LulzSec for the next few days.
June 15, 2011—LulzSec claims responsibility for launching a DDoS attack on the official website of the CIA. The attack has been carried
out by former AnonOps operator Ryan, who wields a botnet and now supports LulzSec.
June 16, 2011—A representative of WikiLeaks contacts Topiary to say that core organizers want to talk to LulzSec. He and Sabu
eventually hold an IRC discussion with a WikiLeaks representative and someone purporting to be Julian Assange. The representative
“verifies” Assange’s presence by temporarily uploading a YouTube video that shows their IRC chat happening in real time on a computer
screen, then panning to show Assange on his laptop. The group discusses ways in which they might collaborate.
June 19, 2011—LulzSec publishes a press release encouraging the revival of the Anti-Security (or Antisec) movement and advocating
cyber attacks on the websites of governments and their agencies.
June 20, 2011—Galvanized by the surprisingly large response to the Antisec announcement, Ryan uses his botnet to DDoS several highprofile
websites, including Britain’s Serious Organised Crime Agency. Later, at 10:30 p.m. that evening in the U.K., he is arrested in his
home.
June 23, 2011—LulzSec publishes sensitive documents stolen from Arizona law enforcement, including the names and addresses of
police officers. Feeling that they have gone one step too far, LulzSec members, including Topiary and Tflow, discuss ending the group.
June 24, 2011—Topiary and Tflow tell AVunit and Sabu that they want to end LulzSec; a heated argument ensues.
June 26, 2011—LulzSec announces it is disbanding after “50 Days of Lulz.”
July 18, 2011—LulzSec comes back for one more hack, uploading a spoof article about the death of News International owner Rupert
Murdoch on the home page of his leading British tabloid, The Sun.
July 19, 2011—British police announce they have arrested a sixteen-year-old male who they claim is LulzSec hacker Tflow.
July 27, 2011—Police arrest Shetland Islands resident Jake Davis, whom they suspect of being LulzSec’s Topiary.
September 2, 2011—British police arrest twenty-four-year-old Ryan Ackroyd, whom they believe to be Kayla.
December 24, 2011—Anonymous announces that it has stolen thousands of e-mails and confidential data from the U.S. security
intelligence firm Stratfor under the banner of “Lulz Christmas.” Sabu, who claims to be still at large while other LulzSec members have been
arrested, keeps tabs on the operation from private chat channels and feeds information about the attack’s organizers to the FBI.
March 6, 2012—News breaks that Hector Monsegur has been acting as an informant for the FBI for the past eight months, helping them
bring charges against Jeremy Hammond of Chicago and five people involved with LulzSec.
Part 1
Chapter 1: The Raid
Notes and Sources
The opening pages, including descriptions of Aaron Barr’s early career, home, and family life, are based on interviews with Barr
conducted both on the phone and in a face-to-face meeting in London. Further details about his work with HBGary Federal came
from an investigative feature article on Wired’s ThreatLevel blog, which dug through his published e-mails and pieced together a
picture of his plans for the company along with the proposals he was making to Hunton & Williams. The article was entitled “Spy
Games: Inside the Convoluted Plot to Bring Down WikiLeaks,” by contributor Nate Anderson. The Financial Times article in which
Aaron Barr revealed his forthcoming research was entitled “Cyberactivists Warned of Arrest,” by San Francisco reporter Joseph
Menn, and was first published Friday, February 4, 2011, then updated the following day. Further details on e-mails between Barr and
Greg Hoglund of HBGary Inc. prior to the attack came from the HBGary e-mail viewer published by the hackers in mid-February.
The details about Sabu hacking computers as a teenager come from interviews with the hacker conducted via Internet Relay Chat in
April 2011, two months before he was arrested and became an FBI informant. Further details about being born and raised in New
York come from court documents after his arrest later that year.
Throughout the book, personal details claimed by Kayla stem from interviews with the hacker conducted between March and
September of 2011 via e-mail and Internet Relay Chat. The rumor about stabbing her webcam with a knife came from an online