We are anonymous inside the hacker world of lulzse

When Gawker’s Adrian Chen started reaching out to LulzSec via Twitter to try to investigate them, the crew, still bitter about his exposé
on the #HQ log leak, decided to aim a separate misinformation campaign directly at him. They invited him into a neutral IRC channel, where
Sabu posed as an ex–secondary-crew member of LulzSec who had run away and wanted to spill some secrets. The crew made their hoax on
Chen especially elaborate, drawing up fake logs, fake web attacks on the fake persona’s school, and fake archives of data as proof for the
journalist. Sabu then started feeding Chen a story that LulzSec was a tool of the Chinese government in a cyber war with the United States,
that Kayla was working with Beijing, and that Topiary was funneling money from the Chinese government into the group.
“If he publishes, that old sack of crap is completely ruined,” Topiary said. They were planning to let the story do the rounds for five days,
then deny it on Twitter, posting a link to all their logs with the journalist. But Chen never published anything. Like Hijazi, he had been
playing along with LulzSec’s story in the hope of teasing out some truth, which he realized he wasn’t getting. The lack of a story was
disappointing for LulzSec’s members, but they were managing to keep outsiders from getting too close; for now, at least.
By early June the members of LulzSec were working flat-out on several different misinformation campaigns and the odd operation and trying
not to think about the potential damage caused by M_nerva. One light in the darkness was that they had racked up five hundred dollars in
Bitcoin donations. Topiary controlled the Bitcoin account and was passing some of the money to Sabu to buy accounts with virtual private
networks, like HideMyAss, to better hide their ring of supporters and also to get more server space. Turning that money into untraceable cash
was a drawn-out task but relatively easy. The Bitcoins bought virtual prepaid cards from Visa, with the help of fake names, addresses,
personal details, and occupations at fake companies, generated in seconds on the website fakenamegenerator.com. As long as the contact
address matched the billing address, no online store would question its authenticity. The Visa account was used to get in the online virtual
world Second Life and buy the in-game currency Lindens. Convert that money into U.S. dollars via a currency transfer site (recommended
by Kayla) called VirWoX, then put those dollars into a Moneybookers account. Finally, transfer that money into a personal bank account.
That was one method. Another more direct route, which Topiary often used, was to simply transfer money between a few different Bitcoin
addresses:
Bitcoin address 1 → Bitcoin address 2 → Bitcoin address 3 → Liberty Reserve (a Costa Rican payment processor) account → Bitcoin
address 4 → Bitcoin address 5 → second Liberty Reserve account → PayPal account → bank account.
If even the hint of a thought occurred to him that there weren’t enough transfers, he would add several more paths.
Then on Monday, June 6, Topiary checked the LulzSec Bitcoin account. Holy shit, he thought. He was looking at a single, anonymous
donation of four hundred Bitcoins, worth approximately $7,800. It was more money than Topiary had ever had in his life. He went straight
into the core group’s secure chat room.
“WHAT THE FUCK guys?!” he said, then pasted the Bitcoin details.
“NO WAY,” said AVunit. “LOL. Something has gone wrong.”
“Nope,” Topiary said. He pasted the details again.
Suddenly they all stopped what they were doing and talked about splitting the money: $1,000 each and the rest to invest in new servers.
They started private messaging Topiary with their unique Bitcoin addresses so he could send them their shares. Topiary had no intention of
keeping quiet about the money or cutting a bigger slice for himself. Everyone was funneling the money through various accounts to keep it
from being traced. Who knew if the donation had come from the Feds or opportunistic military white hats?
“Guys be safe with the Bitcoins please,” said AVunit. “Let it flow through a few gateways.…Use one bit to get out of financial trouble
and then sit on the rest.”
“Okay, beginning the sends,” Topiary said. “All of you are now $1,000 richer.”
“Excuse me while I light up a victory cigar,” said Pwnsauce.
“I’m just going to stare at it,” said Kayla. “Let it grow as Bitcoin progresses.” So volatile and popular was the value of the Bitcoin crypto
currency that by the following day one Bitcoin had risen to $26 in value, making their big donation worth $11,000. Three months prior it had
been one to one with the dollar.
“I’m honestly sorry you guys aren’t here,” said AVunit, “because I’m going to open a bottle of great whiskey. One of the Highland
Scottish.” Topiary barely noticed the reference to where he lived.
“Now let’s all have some sex,” Tflow said.
Everyone was beaming inside, forgetting the enemies and the heat. Sabu took the chance to congratulate his crew. “Thanks, team,” he
said. “We all did great work. We deserved it.”
For Sabu, the celebrations would not last long. The next day, Hector “Sabu” Monsegur finally got a knock on the door from the FBI.
It was late in the evening on Tuesday, June 7, and two agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had entered the Jacob Riis apartment
building and were heading for the sixth floor, where Hector Monsegur lived and often partied with his family and friends. The FBI had been
trying to pin down Sabu for months, and a few weeks prior they had finally managed to corroborate Backtrace’s pronouncment: Sabu had
inadvertently signed into an IRC channel without hiding his IP address. Just the one time was all they needed. To make sure he cooperated,
the Feds needed evidence that Monsegur had broken the law. So they subpoenaed Facebook for details of his account and found stolen credit
card numbers he’d been selling to other hackers. That alone carried a two-year prison sentence. Knowing that he had two daughters and a
family, the FBI now had some leverage.
The FBI had watched and waited for the right moment. Then on Tuesday, the agents got the call to move in. Amid the growing number of
small groups who were, like Backtrace, trying to dox LulzSec, one had published the name Hector Monsegur, along with his real address.
Sabu had recklessly kept hacking till now, perhaps reasoning that he had come too far already and that arrest was inevitable. But the FBI
didn’t want to take any chances. They needed him.
The agents knocked on Monsegur’s maroon-colored door, and it swung open to reveal a young Latino man, broad-shouldered and
wearing a white t-shirt and jeans.
“I’m Hector,” he said. The agents, who were wearing bulletproof vests as a standard precaution, introduced themselves. Monsegur,
apparently, balked. According to a later Fox News report that cited sources who had witnessed the interaction, he told the agents that he
wasn’t Sabu. “You got the wrong guy,” he said. “I don’t have a computer.” Looking into the apartment, the agents saw an Ethernet cable and