The hacker group LulzSec appears to have stopped its activities just 50 days after it first appeared. The collective issued what it called its “final release” on Saturday night via its Twitter account.
According to the statement, LulzSec claims its 50-day lifespan was planned in advance and it also refers to its “crew of six”.
LulzSec first came to prominence – or maybe that should be notoriety – just more than 50 days ago, and was linked, or claimed responsibility, for several high-profile cyber attacks against Sony, Nintendo, Fox.com and the US Senate. The group also said it was behind a distributed denial of service attack against the CIA’s website on 15 June.
Part of its statement reads: “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. All to selflessly entertain others – vanity, fame, recognition, all of these things are shadowed by our desire for that which we all love. The raw, uninterrupted, chaotic thrill of entertainment and anarchy. It’s what we all crave, even the seemingly lifeless politicians and emotionless, middle-aged self-titled failures. You are not failures. You have not blown away. You can get what you want and you are worth having it, believe in yourself.”
What is LulzSec?
LulzSec’s name derived from the ‘LOL’ or ‘laugh out loud’ tag and the tongue-in-cheek tone of its website and Twitter page suggested the impression of pranksters with a skewed sense of humour. The collective is said to include some former members of the activist group Anonymous and one of its main aims seems to have involved pointing out weaknesses in prominent online security systems.
It also looked to build a wider global movement of hackers under the banner of antisec, and recently took a leaf out of WikiLeaks’ book by publishing secret documents from Arizona’s Department of Public Safety.
Reports online suggest there was growing tension between current and former members of Anonymous and some of them, along with some private researchers, worked to shed light on the identities of leading figures within that group and in LulzSec.
It is not clear whether the group’s number includes Ryan Cleary, the 19-year-old who was arrested last week by Scotland Yard’s specialist cyber crime unit in Wickford after a joint investigation with the FBI. In previous tweets since the arrest, LulzSec said some of the attacks Cleary has been charged with predate the group’s existence, going as far back as November 2010.
