LulzSec duo admit hacking into CIA and gaming giants

Two British hackers linked to the notorious Lulz Security group pleaded guilty yesterday to a litany of computer crimes — the latest blow against online miscreants whose exploits against groups such as the CIA have embarrassed governments around the world.

Ryan Cleary, aged 20, and Jake Davis, aged 19, pleaded guilty to conspiring with other members of LulzSec to attack government, law enforcement and media websites last year, Gryff Waldron, an official at Southwark Crown Court said.

LulzSec — an offshoot of loose-knit movement Anonymous — has claimed responsibility for assaults on sites run by the CIA, the US Public Broadcasting Service, and Rupert Murdoch’s News International.

Other targets included Nintendo and Sony and Britain’s National Health Service.

Mr Waldron said two other defendants — 25-year-old Ryan Ackroyd and an unnamed 17-year-old — have pleaded not guilty to the same charges and will face trial next April. All four have denied two counts of encouraging or assisting others to commit computer offences and fraud.

LulzSec shot to prominence in mid-2011 with an attack on PBS, whose site it defaced with a bogus story that the late rapper Tupac Shakur had been found alive.

It was an opening shot in what became a months- long campaign of data theft, online vandalism and denial-of-service attacks, which work by jamming sites with bogus traffic.

The hackers repeatedly humbled law enforcement — stealing data from FBI partner organisation InfraGard, briefly jamming the website of Britain’s Serious and Organised Crime Agency, and publishing a large cache of emails from the Arizona department of public safety.

LulzSec and its reputed leader, known as Sabu, had some of the highest profiles in the movement. But in March, US officials unmasked Sabu as FBI informant Hector Xavier Monsegur and officials on both sides of the Atlantic swooped in on his alleged collaborators.

Mr Cleary, who had been held in an earlier raid, also pleaded guilty to providing the hackers with illegally hijacked computer networks for use in denial- of-service attacks and breaching the Pentagon’s cyberdefences by installing or altering files on US Air Force Agency computers.

He faces a US federal indictment, but his lawyer says he is autistic and she will “fiercely contest” any move to extradite him to America.