We are anonymous inside the hacker world of lulzse

“Just looked at this guy’s source for ‘sonydev.net,’” he said. “It seems ligit. php file etc. Still investigating.”
“Neuron, that source you got,” said Sabu. “[Post it on] pastee.org so we can analyze also.” Neuron sent the others a link to the fifty-fivemegabyte
file along with a thirty-three-digit password to access it.
“Downloading,” said Sabu. “Which site is this for? Sonydev.net?”
“Aye,” said Neuron. “I’m sure we can find the pass somewhere on Sony.”
“Analyzing ‘scedev’ source codes now,” said Sabu. Neuron checked in about ten minutes later.
“What’s the word on that source?” Neuron asked.
Sabu seemed to approve of it. “Should we just leak the source code?” he asked Topiary and Neuron.
“I wouldn’t suggest it just yet,” Neuron replied. “We could use more of his shit. He’s a Sony developer.”
“You serious?” asked Sabu.
“If we keep quiet we can get more,” said Neuron, who took the view that it was better to lurk than dump everything at once like a script
kiddie.
“So tell him to give us access into [the] Sony network.”
“I’ll see. He said he was an ex-Sony developer but has access.”
“Social engineer him into that shit,” said Storm, who was listening in.
“Ok,” said Sabu. “So bro. What are you doing here talking to us? Social his ass. Haha.” Neuron had gone to try to talk to the source again
but it was already too late.
“He logged off,” said Neuron.
“Gay,” Sabu said, a little disappointed. “So he messaged you, gave you source, logged off?”
“Yeah,” said Neuron. “He likes us or something.”
This was how it often went. The promise of leaks and exploits would come from gray and black hat hackers or anyone who had something
worth offering. Often the data wasn’t as exciting as originally promised, but in the end, the team used the source code that the ex–Sony
developer had passed them. And over time they stopped being surprised that so many outside people wanted to pass them vulnerabilities to
exploit—it seemed like everyone in the IT security field, itself a medley of white hats with a darker past, was talking about LulzSec. A few
secretly wished they could be a part of the fun.
One hacker had a particularly unusual way of demanding to be let in. One afternoon, the LulzSec crew found themselves getting
individually kicked out of the public LulzSec chat room.
“Wow, bro,” Storm suddenly said on #pure-elite. “People are trying to down our ops.” Someone was sending junk packets and bumping
each LulzSec crew member off the IRC channel. It wasn’t affecting their computers, but the virtual machines or virtual private networks
being used to displace their true locations were getting hit. DDoSing someone’s IP could make him disappear from the Internet for a while,
but if you did it enough he’d be booted from his hosting service altogether.
“We gotta get off that server,” said a second-tier member called Recursion.
“We’re getting hit,” cried Neuron. There was a general hubbub among the secondary crew as they floundered over a response to the
attack.
Sabu almost rolled his eyes. “Neuron, so sign off? Look guys.” No one was listening.
“The whole room is hit,” Storm exclaimed. “He’s hitting random people.” It seemed a lone mercenary who went by the nickname Xxxx
was trying to disrupt LulzSec’s attempts to meet with its fans.
Then Joepie received a private message: “Hi Kayla or Sabu or Tflow.” It had come from Xxxx. Joepie ran a search on the user’s IP and
realized it was Ryan, the botnet-wielding temperamental operator from AnonOps.
Neuron received the same private message, then others in the secondary crew did too.
“Everybody shut the fuck up,” Sabu said. People were still talking excitedly. “EVERYONE. SHUT THE FUCK UP.” That seemed to
get their attention.
“Relax,” he continued. “As for Ryan, ignore him. He doesn’t know it’s us. Jesus.”
“Relax,” said Joepie, adding a smiley face.
“Ryan, huh?” said Topiary.
“The situation is getting horribly stressing,” said Trollpoll.
“I know, Jesus,” said Sabu. “Look. From now on, no one goes on 2600 unless you prep yourself for the social engineering.”
Everyone was listening now. “If you don’t know how to social engineer do not get on 2600,” he said. “If you do not have a DDoS
protected IP, do not get on 2600. That’s it.”
“Aye,” said Neuron.
“Exactly,” said Storm.
“Aye-aye, Storm,” said Recursion. “Err, Sabu. I meant to say aye-aye Sabu, not Storm.”
“Ok,” said Sabu. “Sony was leaked. We got bigger projects.” He pointed to Neuron’s work on the new Sony development source code.
“How about those who are not too busy work on auditing that source code.” Everyone got back to work.
Chapter 21
Stress and Betrayal
As LulzSec’s targets got bigger, Kayla started drifting away a little from operations, more interested in taking revenge on enemies like Jester