We are anonymous inside the hacker world of lulzse

The Fate of Lulz
LulzSec’s significance had not been completely manufactured. For those who spend most of their time in the world of breathable air,
traffic lights, and bimonthly paychecks, it meant the companies that stored their personal details on flimsy databases reconsidered how well
those details were protected. LulzSec had pointed to an important fallacy held by companies like Sony—that customer data was safe because
their own IT specialists couldn’t hack into them. Now any company could suddenly become a random target of someone else’s whims; it
didn’t take an army of hackers to steal more than a million passwords, but a merry crew of six. LulzSec was doing what full disclosure had
done in the late 1990s: widely publicizing flaws that companies might have left bare and allowed black hats to steal from if they hadn’t been
embarrassed into patching them up.
For those who spend more time looking at screens, immersed in the world of browsers, IRC, and new web scripts, LulzSec had revived an
interest in disrupting the Web. You didn’t need to wait for a raid interesting or funny enough to get a few hundred supporters on /b/ or for an
incident like WikiLeaks to spark a cyber insurgency with thousands of participants. You just needed a handful of talented, motivated people
with a few good connections in the black hat community. LulzSec had reminded Anonymous that small groups could make a lot of noise.
They didn’t always need big resources or connections with the press. Topiary had journalists contacting him every day via Twitter, but he
had given only a handful of interviews as LulzSec. He had not used any special software, just the anonymous web tools of Twitter and
Pastebin, Notepad to write all his missives, and a simple, retro-designed website that used a design template borrowed from HBGary Federal.
Anonymous, as an idea, had been around for thousands of years. At some point, a few cavemen must surely have smeared buffalo blood
over the rocks of a rival in the dead of night and then run away giggling, Topiary thought. With the dawn of the Internet and anonymous
image boards, the process reached beyond a handful to dozens and then to hundreds of people reacting, thinking, and contributing to a
collective thought process within very short spaces of time. Anonymous had become a joint psychological state, a sanctuary where a person’s
mind could be relieved of the responsibilities that came with identity, or of baggage like guilt and fear. It spawned a new wave of creativity—
memes and figurative writing—unhindered by social conventions. When that hive-thought turned to action, it created energy, a mass force
that could not be contained. A few could occasionally direct it, but for the most part that nebulous force, as Topiary called it, seemed to have
a life of its own.
For those who wanted more control and more glory, there were the splinter groups. A month after LulzSec disbanded, several new hacker
groups had popped up to launch their own ops, often in the name of Antisec and web activism. In July a group called the Script Kiddies
hacked into the Twitter feed of Fox News to say that President Barack Obama had been assassinated, and then it defaced the Facebook page
of drug giant Pfizer and claimed to have stolen data from Walmart. Groups from the Philippines, Colombia, Brazil, and Peru launched attacks
in the name of Antisec, mostly publishing data of government or police officials. More groups followed suit. Through no clear objective of
their own, Topiary, Sabu, and Kayla had inspired a trend for anarchic hacktivism.
It was often not to the benefit of hackers, though. While Sabu had seemed disappointed with the end of LulzSec, the revival of Antisec
meant that hackers and script kiddies were still approaching him with vulnerabilities that he could pass on to the FBI. He was fast proving
himself to be a valuable informant. Days after the final release from LulzSec, there were more than six hundred people in the AnonOps chat
room Antisec discussing both legal and illegal forms of protest against various targets. They were now looking to Sabu for direction, hanging
on his every word, trying to impress him with their ideas for hacks.
“I’m doing the same work, more revolutionary,” Sabu said in an interview on July 1, a few days after his bitter send-off with the LulzSec
team members, and of course now secretly working for the FBI. “No more ‘FOR THE LULZ’ as Topiary and Tflow turned it into. I’m
doing real work with real motivations.” With Topiary out of the picture, Hector Monsegur’s alter ego Sabu could comfortably take the virtual
reins of what looked like a resurgent global movement. Even if it was on false pretenses, he could continue living the life of a revolutionary.
Perhaps in an act of self-justification for turning on his old colleagues, he professed nothing but contempt for Topiary and Tflow. “They had
me breaking laws and putting myself out there, and when the heat got too hot for them they copped out,” he said. “They’re fucking frauds.”
Sabu dismissed the idea that he had ever controlled Topiary with intimidation. It’s “bullshit,” he said. “Never once have I mistreated
anyone. I…I feel if they did get caught they’d point all fingers at me. When in reality it’s them organizing this bullshit. Don’t mind me. I’m
just angry about this. I feel used.”
If Sabu felt an ounce of guilt, he didn’t show it. It seemed that his perception of the world was that it had always been against him. In his
version of events, the idea for LulzSec had started as a joke and to get the old crew back together. Then Topiary had motivated him to get
involved, then it had turned into an organization, then something far more serious, with a website, servers, and press releases. Then Topiary
had turned himself into the leader of LulzSec and closed up shop.
“They wanted me to hack for them,” he said. “Then after I did that, they got too scared. It’s that simple.” Ironically, he claimed that the
incident that hurt him the most was when he had gone offline for more than a day, and Topiary had worried that Sabu had been raided. In
retrospect, it seemed he hated the idea that his colleague on the other side of the Atlantic might have correctly suspected the truth.
“The truth is for a few days I took a break because I needed one and my family had some issues,” he explained, now giving a different
version of what really happened that day. “And [Topiary] concocted some story in his mind that I got raided or something more sinister. He
hurt me deep with that act. I would love to speak to him, mainly to see him apologize.”
Sabu claimed that he resented having to clean up the reputational mess Topiary had left behind in the hacker community, responding to
comments that LulzSec members were “shit scared about being nailed by the authorities” and had “run away.” After a couple weeks, Sabu
finally cooled down, and, perhaps unfortunately for Topiary, he reconciled with the Shetland teenager. The two started speaking to each
other regularly on IRC. It was awkward at first, but both accepted that they had been under tremendous pressure and tensions had been
running high.
Topiary had meanwhile taken a break from Anonymous and was trying to spend less time online. He was selling more of his stuff, things
like his cooker, fridge-freezer, and bed frame, packing his books, playing his Xbox. His mother and brother had moved to a suburb in