REVIEW 2013: Members of the LulzSec Hacker Club Sentenced to Prison Terms

LulzSec Logo

British members of the LulzSec Blackhat Hacker Club were sentenced for a series of global cyber-attacks in 2011. Two of the "Hacktivists" have received prison terms, one will be sent to a young offenders’ institution and another received a suspended sentence.

Ryan Ackroyd, Jake Davis, Mustafa Bassam and Ryan Cleary had all pleaded guilty to hacking offenses prior to sentencing at the Southwark Crown Court on Thursday.

Cleary, 21, who also pleaded guilty to possession of images showing child abuse, was sentenced to 32 months, of which he will serve half. He also pleaded guilty to hacking and multiple counts of launching cyber-attacks against organizations, including the CIA and the UK’s Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA), as well as hacking into US Air Force computers at the Pentagon.

From left to right: Cleary, Ackroyd, Bassam, Davis

Ackroyd, 26, who used the online persona of a 16-year-old girl named Kayla, was sentenced to a 30 month sentence of which he is expected to serve 15 months. The former soldier pleaded guilty to one charge of conducting an unauthorized act to hinder the operation of a computer, contrary to the Criminal Law Act 1977.

Davis, 20, was sentenced to two years in a young offenders’ institute for hacking and cyber-attack related offenses. He was also reportedly in charge of media relations for LulzSec.

Jake Davis

Bassam, 18, was still in school when the attacks were carried out and was handed down a 20 month sentence which was suspended for two years, as well as 300 hours of community service. The judge presiding over the case  is said to have taken Bassam's age into account when deciding to give him a suspended sentence.

Lulzsec, whose name is a combination of the acronym Lol - laugh out loud - and security, emerged as a splinter group from the hacking collective Anonymous two years ago. However, unlike Anonymous, the group appeared to be less motivated by politics.

In many of the attacks, the gang of "modern day pirates" stole a high amount of personal information, including Passwords, Emails and credit card details, which they later posted on the LulzSec website and file-sharing sites. They also carried out distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on many victims' Websites, causing them to crash. The FBI, News International, Nintendo and Sony were among many of the other high-profile targets the group targeted in their spree.

Sandip Patel

"It's clear from the evidence that they intended to achieve extensive national and international notoriety and publicity," the UK Independent cites Prosecutor Sandip Patel. "They saw themselves as latter-day pirates."

He added: "This is not about young immature men messing about. They are at the cutting edge of a contemporary and emerging species of criminal offender known as a cyber-criminal."

Hector Monsegur

LulzSec was only in operation for several months in 2011 before the main members were arrested between June and September of 2011, the court heard. In that brief period of time, they managed to attract a huge international audience, attracting 355.000 Twitter followers by July of that year.

Their arrests came after the group's apparent leader, Hector Monsegur – known online as "Sabu" – turned informant after being caught by the FBI.

Source: rt.com

SEE ALSO: The Sealed Indictment

Popular Leicester pub 'The Globe' forced to close after false anti-military Facebook rumours: Man arrested !

...nothing more important to investigate ( f.ex.: The 3 Slaved Women who have been rescued ) , you have to question this all alone by yourself.

Detectives investigating an offence of malicious communication have arrested a man in connection with the incident. 

The 20-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of malicious communications against the Globe Public House in Leicester. 

He has since been released on police bail pending further enquiries. 

In August 2013 police began an investigation after threats were received towards the management at the Globe in Silver Street, Leicester following social media posts claiming the establishment was not allowing military personnel to enter the premises as it was upsetting their customers.

Now this i read a couple of hours ago, and asked myself here, what its all about.

What to the Core is: offence of malicious communication
And what does on suspicion of malicious communications mean

I found out afterwards what its all about:

A popular pub in Leicester was forced to close (in August 2013) amid fears of violent reprisals after its Facebook page was hacked and a message was posted claiming it had banned military personnel.

The false posting, which claimed the pub had enforced the new scheme for fear of upsetting ‘local non British citizens’, was picked up by a nationalist blog and led to the pub being flooded with a storm of allegedly abusive phone calls from people who believed the claim.

The owners of The Globe on Silver Street was forced to shut their doors down on August 17th while security staff were brought in. Leicestershire Police were starting Investigation to an offence of malicious communication.

Everards managing director, Stephen Gould, told the BBC:

"We were placed in a position that throughout the day our staff had to respond to very aggressive people obviously believing that the policy was true.""Ourselves and the manager will have to monitor that very, very carefully over the coming days."

Gould added:

"We have no idea why The Globe was targeted but we will be working with police to find out why this happened."

The pub stated on its Twitter feed:

"The globe has been the victim of a malicious and false news story which states we are no longer servin military personnel. This is false. This pub never has and never will adopt a policy towards the service of either current or ex-military personnel. We understand the delicate nature of this situation and we would sincerely ask for people to stop making threats towards the pub or its staff."

Now, after they arrested a person of interest, i would like to know as well, WHY he did this !

But after the year 2013 will close with all those Leaks, Espionage etc. i guess this could get classified as "TOP SECRET", especially because this Incident was ment against Military Personnel. Lets hope the story continues.