We are anonymous inside the hacker world of lulzse

thought.
“Sabu, when was the last time we, as LulzSec, leaked anything that was ours?” Topiary asked. He listed leaks for Fox, Sony, NATO,
Senate.gov—all targets of cyber attacks handed over on a plate by other hackers. Only Infragard and PBS had truly been carried out by
LulzSec hackers. In the end, LulzSec had become just like Anonymous, a brand that other cyber punks could exploit for their own purposes,
whether it was to make themselves look more important or to cower under. While that had brought them fame and respect, it was vastly
increasing their culpability to the police.
“You guys can go,” Sabu finally said. “I’m fucked sooner or later, so I got no choice but to continue.” Despite the heat, it had never truly
felt like Topiary and Tflow were trapped in LulzSec. Then, when Sabu changed tack and began telling them to stay, adding that they were
abandoning him, it suddenly was like trying to crawl out of a spinning barrel. Soon AVunit and Pwnsauce had entered the chat room and
added their agreement that it was time for a break. Even Kayla showed up and said that while she didn’t mind—“I just let it flow” were her
words—she saw the reasoning in wanting to stop.
Topiary sighed to himself. “You know I’m all for this nihilistic ‘we have to go on’ theory,” he said, “but I like my life, bros. I don’t want to
be arrested.” Encouraged by Tflow, he started talking about how the Antisec movement would carry on without them anyway; they’d sail off
in the distance, leaving behind a trail of mayhem and the revival of a movement against white hats, governments, and corporations. But no
matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t pacify Sabu, who seemed to be laying on the guilt as thick as IRC allowed: “That’s alright, you guys
leave. I’ll be the only faggot left,” he said.
It looked as though Sabu had gone through several stages of intention with LulzSec, initially excited at the prospect of creating the group,
then even more enthusiastic as he took on support from other older hackers and Julian Assange himself. Topiary started to think Sabu was
almost acting suicidal. More likely: Hector Monsegur had nothing more to lose, and the FBI needed more evidence on the LulzSec hackers.
“Sabu, we’re leaving behind the LulzSec public face with a classy ending,” he tried. “The movement you strive for is continuing.” It was
no use. After a few minutes, Sabu started talking to each of the hackers individually. He was enraged.
Soon enough Topiary saw flashing text on his screen that indicated Sabu wanted to have a private conversation. Reluctantly he opened it,
and Sabu started venting. Topiary kept saying that ending LulzSec had turned out to be a majority decision. It wasn’t just him—the whole
team wanted a break. But Sabu saw a team that had been turned against him by Topiary’s manipulation. When the heat increased, Topiary
told Sabu to get off the computer and get a drink of water so he could calm down.
“Don’t fucking talk down to me like you’re elite,” Sabu shot back. “I treat you with nothing but respect, but I destroy kids like you
instantly. Don’t forget this point. So treat me with respect.”
“Sabu what are you thinking?” Topiary said. “You’ve got kids and need to stop this. At least change your nick from Sabu.”
“It’s too late anyway,” Sabu said, simmering.
“What do you mean? You can’t say it’s too late. You don’t want your kids to grow up with their dad in jail. Change your nick, wipe all
your stuff and come back under a different name. If I had kids I wouldn’t be doing this.” Sabu replied again that it was too late. The team was
abandoning him.
“We’re not abandoning you,” Topiary countered. “We’re just stopping LulzSec. We’re still here as friends.” Instead of mollifying Sabu,
this made him more angry. Topiary gave up trying to reason with him. It was impossible to explain why things happened in LulzSec or in
Anonymous other than to say that so much had been done on a whim: creating the group itself, picking the targets, suddenly reviving the
Antisec movement. LulzSec had never planned its activities more than twelve hours in advance. The media and the authorities were giving
LulzSec too much credit and not seeing it for what it really was: a group of people with all the right talents that had come together at the right
time and had then lost control of what they had created. Now even Topiary was starting to get bored with it all.
Sabu began hinting that he saw less whim, and more conspiracy. He opened up private discussions with AVunit and Tflow, who later
passed on details of these conversations to Topiary. Sabu talked with each of them about how Topiary had been using him and Kayla to hack
into websites like PBS. He argued that when his grandmother had died and he had to go on a break, Topiary had effectively tried to wrest
LulzSec from his control, then take off with the Bitcoin donations. Sabu’s brain of reason was now his fall guy. It was almost as if he were
trying to get the other team members to implicate Topiary as much as possible before they split for good.
When Topiary got wind from the others about Sabu’s private discussions, he suddenly realized the other reason why he wanted out:
Sabu’s uncanny ability to get inside his head. If Sabu was a good hacker, he was an even better social engineer. Despite his fierce temper, he
could coax love, admiration, and guilt out of just about anyone. Often it had been based on something intangible—the promise of a bigger
hack on the horizon or the devotion that the LulzSec members had for one another as a team. The harsh reality was that the members now all
had to fend for themselves.
Topiary tried to ignore Sabu’s protestations and began writing his final press release, titled “50 Days of Lulz.”
“Let it be known in an entirely sexual way that we love each and every one of you,” Topiary told the more than 325,000 followers on
Twitter, “even the trolls.” Ten minutes later he published the release:
“For the past 50 days we’ve been disrupting and exposing corporations, governments, often the general population itself, and quite
possibly everything in between, just because we could,” it said. “All to selflessly entertain others.” These were Topiary’s words, not Sabu’s.
It wasn’t the rousing address he and Tflow had discussed but a metaphor of what LulzSec had been over the past month: rambling, cocksure,
and reaching for a sense of serious conviction about some issue while never seeming truly committed to it. It called on more people to follow
the Twitter account Anonymous IRC. Controlled by several hard-core hacktivists who did not wish to be named, it had more than 125,000
followers and was slowly looking like an official line of communication for Anonymous.
The final leak was a mishmash that included a technical document for AOL engineers, internal documents from AT&T, and user info from
gaming and hacker forums. The statement revealed for the first time that LulzSec had been a “crew of six.” Topiary had said it loud and clear:
LulzSec was over.
Chapter 24