We are anonymous inside the hacker world of lulzse

The assertion that the AnonOps chat rooms were “ablaze with rumors” are based on my own observations after visiting the IRC
network; Sabu’s statement that he was “pretty fucking depressed” comes from my interview with him.
The statement that the name Jake had popped up in the AnonOps chat room after an error involving his VPN connection was sourced
from my observations of the December 8 AnonOps public chat log database on http://blyon.com/Irc/. The rumor about the friend from
Xbox forums posting “Jake from Shetland” was sourced from Sabu’s published chat log with Mike “Virus” Nieves (see chapter 26)
and the Gawker story “How a Hacker Mastermind Was Brought Down by His Love of Xbox,” published on August 16, 2011.
Details about VPN provider HideMyAss responding to a U.K. court order to help identify a member of LulzSec were sourced from a
blog post on HideMyAss’s website entitled “LulzSec Fiasco,” published on September 23, 2011. HideMyAss did not respond to
repeated requests for interviews and did not list a phone number on its website.
The item about the Department of Homeland Security expecting more significant attacks from Anonymous was sourced from the
department’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center bulletin published on August 1, 2011.
Details about and descriptions of Jake Davis’s court appearance were sourced from my observations while attending the hearing, with
added context provided by later interviews with Davis.
The book Free Radicals: The Secret Anarchy of Science got a significant boost in its Amazon rankings after Jake Davis flashed its cover
to the cameras, according to an interview with the book’s author, Michael Brooks.
Descriptions of the propaganda images and digital posters made of Jake Davis after his court appearance were sourced from my own
observations after speaking to several Anonymous supporters on AnonOps, one of whom directed me to a growing repository of
these images.
Details about Jake Davis’s fan mail and his life at home were sourced from interviews with Davis, which included visits to his home in
Spalding, and from my own observation of some of the letters he received.
Details about the raid executed by William and other members of /b/ against a sixteen-year-old girl on Facebook named Selena (not her
real name) were sourced from interviews with William conducted via e-mail and in person.
Davis’s meeting with William was arranged by me. I had thought for some time that it would be intriguing to observe what would
happen if two people from Anonymous were to meet face-to-face. I had also wanted to arrange for an Anon and a victim of Anon—
e.g., Jake Davis and Aaron Barr—to meet in person. Distance and time constraints made a meeting between Barr and Davis
impractical, so the next best thing seemed to be a meeting between William and Topiary. I asked each of them if he was willing to
meet the other, and after they agreed I set a date in February of 2011. On the appointed day, I met first with William before traveling
with him by train to the meeting place with Davis. I accompanied them both to a restaurant, where we talked over lunch. As the two
men discussed Anonymous, I asked questions and took notes.
Chapter 26: The Real Sabu
Details about Sabu’s cooperation with police, and his criminal misdemeanors outside the world of Anonymous and LulzSec, were
sourced from his criminal indictment and from a transcript of his August 5, 2011, arraignment in New York’s U.S. District Court.
Further context and description was provided by an interview with a source who had knowledge of the FBI investigation of Sabu, as
well as interviews with Anonymous hackers who had worked with Sabu in the months after LulzSec disbanded and during his time
as an FBI informant. All sources claimed not to have known categorically that Sabu was an informant, though they had varying
degrees of suspicion.
The description of Hector “Sabu” Monsegur was sourced from the Fox News report “Infamous International Hacking Group LulzSec
Brought Down by Own Leader,” published on March 6, 2012, and from the New York Times story “Hacker, Informant and Party
Boy of the Projects,” published on March 8, 2012.
Further descriptions of Sabu were sourced from my own conversations with him online and by telephone, from my observations of his
Twitter feed, and from a leaked chat log between Sabu and hacker Mike “Virus” Nieves. The chat log was published on Pastebin on
August 16, 2011, and entitled “sabu vs virus aka dumb & dumber part 2.”
The comprehensive dox of Sabu, which this time included a photo of Hector Monsegur, was posted by a white hat security researcher
nicknamed Le Researcher, who pasted a variety of screenshots of e-mails, deface messages, and forum posts on
http://ceaxx.wordpress.com/uncovered/.
The assertion that hacktivism is “extremely popular in Brazil” was sourced from a report by Imperva entitled “The Anatomy of an
Anonymous Attack,” published in February of 2012, as well as from my own observations of the number of press reports about cyber
attacks by Anonymous in Brazil.
Descriptions of and dialogue from Sabu’s interactions with sup_g, aka Jeremy Hammond, ahead of the Stratfor attack were sourced
from Hector Monsegur’s criminal indictment, with further context, including details about his relations with WikiLeaks, taken from
interviews with other hackers who took part in the Stratfor attack.
The reference to the New York Times article in which the FBI denied they had “let [the Stratfor] attack happen” is sourced from the story
“Inside the Stratfor Attack,” published on the paper’s Bits blog on March 12, 2012.
Details about Donncha “Palladium” O’Cearrbhail hacking into the Gmail account of a member of the Irish national police to listen in on
a call between the FBI and the Metropolitan Police were sourced from both O’Cearrbhail’s and Monsegur’s indictments.
Details about Monsegur passing himself off as a federal agent to the NYPD were sourced from his criminal indictment.
Chapter 27: The Real Kayla, the Real Anonymous
Descriptions of Ryan Mark Ackroyd were sourced from my observations of Ackroyd at his first court appearance, on March 16, 2012.