Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LulzSec's 'Topiary' arrested

nakedsecurity.sophos.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 115 posts

Re: LulzSec's 'Topiary' arrested

#51

Post by lambersley »

Mizza wrote: post #44
driverdan wrote: post #25

I'm curious what led to all the arrests. It's not that hard to hide your identity if you truly want to be anonymous.

Snitching. It really isn't that hard to remain anonymous, as you said. But if you're spending hundreds of hours working on Ops with a small team, you learn to trust them and you slip up and share personal information. When somebody slips up, the cops threaten to drop the hammer unless they give up the rest. A 17 year old kid isn't going to risk his whole life for somebody he's never even met, so he snitches. LulzSec…

"Would you have sex for $5?" "No" Would you have sex for $500?" "Maybe" "Would you have sex for $5,000,000?" "Yes"

Everyone succumbs (snitches) with the right encouragement (threat)

Re: LulzSec's 'Topiary' arrested

#52

Post by alexgartrell »

Hominem wrote: post #50
alanfalcon wrote: post #4

Every time I read a story like this, I picture the opening sequence from "Hackers". I wonder if that isn't one of the most realistic portrayals (of anything) in that movie?

I was busted in much the same way in the early 90s in NYC. Yes, it was the only realistic part of the movie. It is a bit frightening to be woken up by a man pointing a shotgun in your face when you are 13. IIRC, there was a well known NYC hacker who was getting ready for school, and was in the shower, when the SS burst in and the scene was loosely based on him.

Any way we could get you to share more of your story?

Re: LulzSec's 'Topiary' arrested

#53

Post by Hominem »

alexgartrell wrote: post #52
Hominem wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was busted in much the same way in the early 90s in NYC. Yes, it was the only realistic part of the movie. It is a bit frightening to be woken up by a man pointing a shotgun in your face when you are 13. IIRC, there was a well known NYC hacker who was getting ready for school, and was in the shower, when the SS burst in and the scene was loosely based on him.

Any way we could get you to share more of your story?

Not much to say. It was part of operation sundevil. I was never arrested or indicted and eventually got all my equipment back.

I'm not sure if it is SOP, or the Secret Service thought they were dealing with violent criminals. But they knocked down the front door with one of those rams you see on TV , ran room to room "securing" everything. Once they realized they were dealing with a scared 13 year old they seemed more embarassed than anything.

In addition to the local cops, and the Secret Service, there was a postal inspector involved, that guy was kind of a dick, he kept sneering and telling me stuff like "you are going down buddy", even at that young age I figured he didn't get out of the office much. The Secret Service spent post of their time bullshitting and telling me stories of various trips abroad with the president. Some of the nerds bagging up all my equipment would sometimes come in and peer at me, asking me minor questions like "Why do you have so many batteries" until they were reminded that I was a minor and they did not have parental permission to ask me questions.

I waited for years for the other shoe to drop, and be indicted, but I never was.

I still have all the equipment, still tagged, and even have some disks they put in the drives labeled "SS transport disk"

Re: LulzSec's 'Topiary' arrested

#54

Post by pyre »

Aloisius wrote: post #23
jgrahamc wrote: post #6

The other day his Twitter feed was cleaned up and a single tweet remained: http://twitter.com/#!/atopiary/status/94225773896015872 reading "You cannot arrest an idea". I guess he saw this coming.

You may not be able to arrest an idea, but you sure can give its owner more jail time for destroying evidence. What was he thinking?

When you're facing the possibility of having multiple governments looking to 'come down hard' on you, I doubt destruction of evidence adds much to the mix.

Re: LulzSec's 'Topiary' arrested

#55

Post by Aloisius »

pavpanchekha wrote: post #19
colinplamondon wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacktivists? These guys are breaking into private companies and stealing property. They're criminals .

Hold on, hold on, let me try to clear some things up. A criminal is a rigidly-defined adjective meaning an entity which breaks or broke laws. An activist is a rigidly-defined term meaning an entity which acts to further some idea and bring it to public perception. A hacktivist isn't well-defined, but we'll assume here that it's a form of activist. Now based on this, the Anonymous and Lulzsec hackers were hacktivists,…

Their stated goal is to have fun and cause mayhem. That isn't activism by any stretch of the imagination.

While some of their attacks have stated goals that appear to be activism, some of them, like the attacks on Nintendo, pron.com and Minecraft appear not to serve any type of activism I'm aware of.

Re: LulzSec's 'Topiary' arrested

#56

Post by pyre »

dmbass wrote: post #12

So the A-Team dox were a bunch of rubbish? (or perhaps that was already confirmed and I missed it). http://pastebin.com/iVujX4TR

If this report is right, then those d0x were BS:

  ###########################################################################
  ###########################################################################
  ooooooooooooo                       o8o                                
  8'   888   `8                       `"'                                
       888       .ooooo.  oo.ooooo.  oooo   .oooo.   oooo d8b oooo    ooo
       888      d88' `88b  888' `88b `888  `P  )88b  `888""8P  `88.  .8'  
       888      888   888  888   888  888   .oP"888   888       `88..8'  
       888      888   888  888   888  888  d8(  888   888        `888'    
      o888o     `Y8bod8P'  888bod8P' o888o `Y888""8o d888b        .8'    
                           888                                .o..P'      
                          o888o                               `Y8P'      
 
  ###########################################################################
  ###########################################################################

    Now we have Topiary.  Probably the lamest one of the bunch.  He doesn't
    actually do anything except give interviews.  There are plenty of logs of
    him all over the internet being a complete idiot.  His "d0x" are all over
    the internet also.  He tries to deny it but there are logs of him bitching
    about being d0x'ed int he #hq logs that Laurelai leaked.
 
    Name: Daniel Ackerman Sandberg
    Location: Sweden

Re: LulzSec's 'Topiary' arrested

#59

Post by AndyJPartridge »

chippy wrote: post #18

I am very curious as to the methods of how they caught him. Anyone care to guess, or know?

It is very likely he was informed on. (Grassed / Snitched)

One of the better broadsheet newspapers here in the UK had an article on Lulzsec/Anonymous, and one of the best comments they made was:

"Hackers fear other hackers more than law enforcement."

In this community it seems there is no honour amongst thieves. I very much suspect they grabbed a bunch of people around the world who were less talented at hiding themselves, and one of them knew enough to plea bargain in return for information.

Re: LulzSec's 'Topiary' arrested

#60

Post by pygy_ »

Aloisius wrote: post #55
pavpanchekha wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold on, hold on, let me try to clear some things up. A criminal is a rigidly-defined adjective meaning an entity which breaks or broke laws. An activist is a rigidly-defined term meaning an entity which acts to further some idea and bring it to public perception. A hacktivist isn't well-defined, but we'll assume here that it's a form of activist. Now based on this, the Anonymous and Lulzsec hackers were hacktivists,…

Their stated goal is to have fun and cause mayhem. That isn't activism by any stretch of the imagination. While some of their attacks have stated goals that appear to be activism, some of them, like the attacks on Nintendo, pron.com and Minecraft appear not to serve any type of activism I'm aware of.

They put the spotlight on the widespread disdain for security exhibited by major corporations regarding their client's data?

That was the core message between the lulz. That said, dumping the full data was not necessary to make that point, even though it probably increased the media coverage, hence the spread of their message.

Post reply on HN