We are anonymous inside the hacker world of lulzse

LulzSec. Tflow created a torrent file.
There hadn’t been much time to check over the press release, and there was no editing. Once everything was ready, Topiary published it.
The press release was titled “Chinga La Migra” and next to it were the words “Off the pigs”; beside that was the image of an AK-47 machine
gun fashioned from keyboard symbols. Topiary did a double take. When he reread the press release, now public for everyone to see, he
didn’t see LulzSec’s usual lighthearted dig at a large, faceless institution but an aggressive polemic against real police officers that revealed
their home addresses. When he Googled Chinga La Migra, he learned it was a Spanish phrase for “fuck the police.” He immediately
regretted posting the other hacker’s statement. It was almost encouraging people to attack cops. It turned out Tflow had also Googled Chinga
La Migra and felt exactly the same way.
He sent Topiary a message. It was too much. The statement had made him feel “radicalized.”
“We don’t want to get police officers killed,” Topiary replied, agreeing. “That’s not my kind of style.” It wasn’t Tflow’s either.
Topiary had just set up an interview via instant message text with the BBC television news program Newsnight that evening, June 24. It
was one of his few media interviews while LulzSec was still active. Putting on his acting hat, he made grand statements about anti-security
and the corruption his group was fighting. “People fear the ‘higher-ups,’” he told BBC producer Adam Livingstone, “and we’re here to bring
them down a few notches.” But the words stuck in his throat.
When he really thought about what LulzSec had turned into, he realized it had moved far from being a group that simultaneously
entertained and fixed the world. It did neither of those things. It was chaos. Every day now the core group was spending more time dealing
with internal issues, conspiring against trolls like Jester and Backtrace, rooting out snitches, or worrying about what Ryan might say to the
police. It had been more than a week since the team had really gotten together and worked at something as an original leak. Just hours before
Topiary’s interview with BBC Television, the Guardian newspaper had gotten hold of the #pure-elite logs leaked weeks before by M_nerva
and published a story saying that LulzSec was “a disorganized group obsessed with media coverage and suspicious of other hackers.” The
glow surrounding LulzSec seemed to be fading.
“This is annoying now,” Topiary exclaimed in an interview. “Two months ago we were a small team working on operations with no
outside hassle. Now there’s other people coming and going, ‘enemy’ groups, press saying stupid things, people trying to toss around politics,
people starting drama all the time. Kind of out of control.” Even the Wikipedia page on LulzSec was cluttered with rumors.
The distractions from enemy hackers, trolls, the press, and misunderstandings across the blogosphere had become overwhelming. Recently
someone had copied and pasted the LulzSec logo on a Pastebin post and claimed (posing as LulzSec) that they had hacked the entire U.K.
census database of more than seventy million people. The national press breathlessly reported it as another legitimate LulzSec threat. LulzSec
was becoming like Anonymous: anyone could lay claim to the name and be taken seriously.
“People are pretending to be us everywhere,” Topiary said. Ignoring the trolls wasn’t enough because when Topiary signed in to the
private LulzSec chat rooms with his crew, he could see that people in the room had spent the past hour talking about snitches and enemies. It
was often impossible to look away, and when Topiary stayed quiet in those conversations, Sabu would ask him why he wasn’t saying
anything, and the conversation would become awkward.
Topiary finally made up his mind. On the evening of Friday, June 24, four days after Ryan’s arrest, he decided to tell the others in LulzSec
that he wanted out. It would be hard because, as the mouthpiece of LulzSec, Topiary leaving meant the team itself would probably have to
call it a day. As he entered the LulzSec private chat channel, Tflow beat him to the punch. “Guys. Topiary, AVunit, you here?” Tflow asked.
“Yeah,” Topiary replied.
“Well, I need to leave LulzSec / Anon / etc. for some time. I need to hand over any site-related stuff to you guys, including domains.”
Topiary felt a sudden rush of relief. The very idea of leaving LulzSec seemed to make all the other distractions and anxieties melt away. It
was possible there was an end to this. He wanted Tflow to lay out why he was leaving so the group could have a discussion about it. Maybe
others would say they wanted to stop too.
“Any reason for your departure?” he asked.
“I’ll be honest,” Tflow replied. “The ‘off the pigs’ remark in the last release, which I did not know the meaning of before, is making me
feel radicalized and depressed, so I need a break. Feds probably are going to leave no stone unturned now, so I’m going to wipe my hard
drive and start fresh.”
Another glimmer of optimism. It would be hard to let go of the name and the action, but there was something appealing about starting over.
He threw in his agreement.
“I was thinking kind of the same,” Topiary said. “Like you said, heat is insane…I mean, a friend that has nothing to do with us saw Ryan
on the front page of a shitty local newspaper. I know I don’t want to be on the front page of a shitty local newspaper. And neither do you
guys.” Besides, he added, “All our leaks come from other people.”
“So do you think we should all just quietly split up for a while or what?” asked Tflow.
“I think it would be classy to sail off into the distance and never be caught,” Topiary mused. “In 10 years we will be the greatest hacking
group in the entire world. Ever.” It was tongue in cheek, but the thought of leaving on a high note, like rock stars disbanding while they were
still on the charts, suddenly made ending LulzSec seem like a good idea. Obvious, even.
Topiary and Tflow started discussing their final, explosive release of some of the pile of data they had been sitting on for weeks. An
American hacker had given Tflow a cache of stolen business documents from AT&T’s servers. There were login details for a NATO
bookshop, as well as other .gov and .mil logins. Tflow had thought the AT&T documents were valuable enough to save for a separate
release, but Chinga La Migra had opened his eyes to how futile things really were.
“I don’t give a shit anymore,” he said. “Release everything.” Then Tflow checked his calendar and saw this all made even more sense.
“On Monday it will be exactly 50 days that have passed,” he added. They could call the final release Fifty Days of Lulz. It might almost look
like this had been planned from the start.
Sabu appeared online. “Yo yo,” he said.
Topiary felt a twinge of anticipation but continued discussing practicalities with Tflow as Sabu read over their conversation. “Wow,” Sabu
finally said. “I understand your point of views, but there’s no turning back. We’ve passed the point of no return.”
Topiary was getting tired of Sabu’s point-of-no-return line and wanted to remind him that he and LulzSec weren’t as powerful as Sabu
thought.