back to article Feds on trail of LulzSec raid Ohio house

The international investigation into the notorious LulzSec hacking crew has moved from the UK to the US Midwest with the search of a house in Hamilton, Ohio by FBI agents. Feds searched the house without making any arrests – at least initially – according to local media reports (here and here). It is unclear whether …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    m_nerva ...

    ... claims to have aspergers and has asked to be extradited to the UK.

  2. Atonnis
    Happy

    It's probably true...

    'The group said the decision to disband itself had nothing to do with increased law enforcement attention.'

    It's entirely possible that it is little to do with the law enforcement attention - it's due to the attention of other groups declaring war on them. They realised that they weren't half as clever or protected as they thought they were once their logs and personal information started leaking out.

    Although I also wonder if they've fed one of their number to the wolves in an effort to try and escape - hopefully the law agencies won't be stupid enough to pander to the media-loved methods of grabbing one or two scapegoats and blaming them and will hunt the whole lot of them down.

    1. Tom 13

      No need to worry about the police going lax.

      Other hackers are already on the case. THEY won't quit so the police can't either. It's an embarrassing when the amateurs do better than the pros.

      1. Matthew Anderson

        not quite

        The police have to start from scratch where as the "hackers" already know each other, which circles they run in and where to gain said logs from. They are also snitching on each other.

        1. NullReference Exception
          Big Brother

          not to mention

          The police also have to (in theory) follow those pesky rules about search warrants and probable cause and the like. Hackers don't...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re

      Well they know the "pros" are incompetent; they showed that to the world. The other hackers will have a much easier time finding them. Makes sense.

  3. Whitter
    Boffin

    Population group bias?

    One wonders if they'll all turn out to have Aspergers: not as an excuse, but as an honest personal characteristic that biases somebody into to getting active with this sort of milarkie. Perhaps there'll be enough arrests to see, probably not.

    1. Anonymous Coward 101

      Does it matter?

      People who beat up other people tend to be a bit aggressive and quick tempered. The only difference is, "I'm aggressive and easily tempered, so I couldn't help beating him up" does not gain traction in a court of law, unlike Asperger's does with hacking.

      1. Daniel 4

        Re: Does it matter?

        Yes and no. If they aren't so mentally impaired that they can't understand that what they are doing is "wrong," then it's not going to save them from a conviction. On the other hand, if someone has a real mental disorder that predisposes them to commit crimes, and ends up in the "correctional system," then they should be offered all appropriate treatment while they are there. In that sense, it does matter.

        It also matters in other ways as well, including whether or not the subject is actively trying to work with qualified professionals to treat a real condition. I would feel no sympathy towards someone who stood in court and went "I'm aggressive and easily tempered, so I couldn't help beating him up." On the other hand, someone who had struggled with seizures for years, is under the care of a neurologist, and had a single, short violent episode out of nowhere - I would feel a great deal of sympathy for, and depending on the exact details, may not be able to vote to convict if I were on the jury. Obviously, this is the extreme case to show that such things can make a difference - I don't think we have to worry about any such extremes here.

        -d

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    Don't trust your buddies in crime

    Because when you fall out with hem they will stab you in the back.

    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Boffin

      RE: Don't trust your buddies in crime

      Crime writer Elmore Leonard did a lot of research for his novels. He came up with some interesting observations, including that more criminals had been convicted as a result of being "grassed up" by other criminals than by any other means. It explained why known grasses are so unpopular that they were the group at highest risk of being killed in prison. From his research, Leonard decided that the worst thing a criminal could do was mix with other criminals, as the chances of getting caught seemed to go up exponentially with each association with another criminal. It seems the rule still applies to skiddy gangs too - by their very nature, they require co-operation between groups of people without much to lose from grassing each other up. If you were facing a stretch inside, how much would you worry about grassing on some guy you may never have actually met? There is no honour between thieves seems to apply just as neatly to street gangs as to skiddies.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Raid on the The Guardian?

    "The Guardian recently published LulzSec's private chat logs"

    Will the police now be arresting The Guardian staff for hacking?

    loll Whats good for the Goose...

    1. BristolBachelor Gold badge
      Joke

      No VISA for Grauniad

      "Will the police now be arresting The Guardian staff for hacking?"

      No, but since they released these private "cables", VISA and Mastercard will stop processing payments for them :)

    2. Andrew Moore

      My guess...

      Is Assange will sue the Guardian because all private/leaked documents in the world belong to him.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Typo?

    Did you mean to write 'notorious' or should that have been 'tedious'?

  7. El Cid Campeador
    Childcatcher

    So has any good come of all this?

    I can't wait until we get some good post-LulzSec studies to see if all this publicity has resulted in more attention to security...

    1. Eguro

      Fear > Prevention

      I imagine companies will look at the current police investigation as a perfect deterrent.

      No need to upgrade internal security, have to deal with encryptions or something, when all the hackers of the world are now soooo scared they'd never dare hack anyone - especially [Insert name of idiotic company].

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Brave Sir LulzSec...

    He was not in the least bit scared to be mashed into a pulp,

    Or to have his eyes gouged out, and his elbows broken;

    To have his kneecaps split, and his body burned away;

    And his limbs all hacked and mangled, brave Sir LulzSec!

    His head smashed in and his heart cut out

    And his liver removed and his bowels unplugged

    And his nostrils raped and his bottom burned off

    And his pen--

  9. Rogerborg

    HE'S SPARTACUS!

    And so's his wife.

    No honour among thieves, no backbone among spackers. They'll all be busy working on their "bigger boys did it" plea bargains by now.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Security for the lulz...

    ... I do hope that the merry band have their DBAN disks and hidden anonymous remote lockers ready, so the Feds just find a bunch of vanilla Ubuntu installs when they analyze the drives.....

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re:So has any good come of all this?

    In all the press that I've read about LulzSec's successes I've read nothing about how the various victims intend to repair their security holes to prevent future such exploits. The focus has all been on catching those bad boys/girls. The laws seem to be built that way too. It's a crime to expose an entity's security flaws, but not a crime for those entity's security groups to fail to anticipate and close those flaws.

    No, no good has come of all this. The holes are still there. The poor downtrodden security staff are curled up in the foetal position sucking their thumbs. The Keystone Kops are breaking down doors. And no one seems to be thinking about the not-so-lulzish" hackers who might be stealthily exploiting such security flaws for personal gain.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    Do I really have to include a title?

    I've heard that LulzSec members have been offered jobs with News of the World...

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Thieves

    Don't you love the posts here supporting these jerks.

    These guys are criminals. Their "security" crap is just a coverup to commit their crimes.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    another point

    If these script kiddies were doing it to benefit us, they would not be posting everyone's login and passwords for everyone to download. Anyone with any common sense can see that.

    Or taking down gaming servers just for the fun of it, some that many pay money out of their own pocket to access. Or attacking a site like magnets.com for no reason... probably a little company trying to make a living. Or making extortion threats to another business owner.

    Or stealing credit card numbers, or posting personal details of police officers in Arizona so that their families will be at risk from drug lords in that State.

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