LulzSec ‘outs’ hackers it claims caused UK arrest

22 Jun 2011

LulzSec has revealed the identities of two prominent hackers it claims ‘snitched’ and caused the arrest of 19-year-old Essex teenager Ryan Cleary, suspected to have been one of LulzSec’s masterminds.

As news emerged the UK census may have been hacked and all 27m records may have fallen into the hands of hackers, Cleary was arrested by UK police with the assistance of the FBI.

Cleary is believed to have been a former member of hacktivist collective Anonymous.

LulzSec is a group that split away from Anonymous and is responsible for significant cyber attacks that breached the networks of the CIA, FBI, Sony and Citibank, to name but a few.

In a tweet, LulzSec said Cleary wasn’t a member. Nevertheless, it revealed the identity of a hacker known as m_nerva (aka, cimx, aka, rq42).

In a post on Pastebin, the site LulzSec uses to expand on its Twitter announcements, the hacker group said it was offering up m_nerva to the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies because he allegedly snitched on Cleary. LulzSec says he was behind the attack on the game Deus Ex and other cyber crimes, and is trying to flee the country.

It also revealed the name of one of m_nerva’s associates, called Hann.

“These goons begged us for mercy after they apologised to us all night for leaking some of our affiliates’ logs. There is no mercy on The Lulz Boat,” the hacker group said.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com