British cops take down LulzSec founderJul 29, 2011 6:13am
YOU can hack, but you can't hide. Nine days after LulzSec take down The Sun, police swoop on their second-in-command.
"The man arrested is believed to be linked to an ongoing international investigation into the criminal activity of the so-called 'hacktivist' groups Anonymous and LulzSec, and uses the online nickname 'Topiary' which is presented as the spokesperson for the groups."
Topiary is claimed to have been the media relations spokesman for Anonymous and found fame well before founding LulzSec and launching its infamous "50 Days of Lulz" campaign in April.
In February, Topiary took on Westboro Baptist Church spokeswoman Shirley Phelps-Roper live on US broadcaster David Pakman's show.
While Ms Phelps-Roper was accusing Anonymous of hacking the church's anti-gay websites, Topiary himself hacked the church's official website and presented the results to Ms Phelps-Roper at the end of the interview.
The exchange went viral on YouTube, clocking up 1.5 million hits in five days.
Yesterday, Topiary found himself being transported to a London police station and a search was under way at his house.
Officers from a London-based cyber crime unit nabbed him in a "pre-planned intelligence-led operation" on the Shetland Islands, London's Metropolitan Police said.
Police are also searching a home in Lincolnshire, eastern England, and a 17-year-old male was being interviewed in connection with the inquiry.
Lulz Security has claimed responsibility for a hacking rampage in the United States which saw the group target websites of the Central Intelligence Agency, the US Senate, Sony and others.
Last week, News Corporation chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper division News International pulled its websites after LulzSec replaced the online version of the Sun with a fake story pronouncing Mr Murdoch's death.
Scotland Yard said the overnight operation was linked to the cybercrime unit's "ongoing investigation into network intrusions and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against a number of international business and intelligence agencies by what is believed to be the same hacking group".
Authorities in Britain and the United States have already made a number of arrests of suspected Lulz Security and Anonymous hackers.
British police arrested Ryan Cleary, 19, last month at his home in Wickford, southeast England, and charged him with attacking websites as part of Lulz Security.
He was charged with offences including hacking into the website of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), the British equivalent of the FBI. He was released on bail after being diagnosed with
autism.
US authorities on July 19 arrested 16 people for cyber crimes including 14 over an online attack on the PayPal website claimed by the hacking group "Anonymous", the Department of Justice (DoJ) said.
In a sign of the transnational nature of the two hacking groups, it said those raids were carried out in coordination with Scotland Yard and the Dutch National Police Agency.
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