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LulzSec's 'Topiary' arrested

nakedsecurity.sophos.com

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Re: LulzSec's 'Topiary' arrested

#61

Post by meatsock »

Hominem wrote: post #53
alexgartrell wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mor…

"I'm not sure if it is SOP, or the Secret Service thought they were dealing with violent criminals"

seems possible the bulk of them had first learned about hackers at the same time they learned about the raid -- perhaps from someone who exaggerated the average size of a hacker's fangs. in any event it doesn't seem likely that in preparation for sundevil they'd have consulted with anyone that would have urged a relaxed and moderated view of what was at that time an unexplored frontier of law enforcement.

Re: LulzSec's 'Topiary' arrested

#63

Post by 3pt14159 »

knieveltech wrote: post #38
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.

Hiding your identity from casual observers: trivial. Hiding your identity from scrutiny by local law enforcement: straightforward. Hiding your identity from scrutiny by federal agents: Tricky. Hiding your identity from scrutiny by an international investigation after having pissed off several high octane intelligence agencies: impossible.

Not impossible. Very burdensome and lonely, but not impossible.

Re: LulzSec's 'Topiary' arrested

#64

Post by Hominem »

meatsock wrote: post #61
Hominem wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mor…

"I'm not sure if it is SOP, or the Secret Service thought they were dealing with violent criminals" seems possible the bulk of them had first learned about hackers at the same time they learned about the raid -- perhaps from someone who exaggerated the average size of a hacker's fangs. in any event it doesn't seem likely that in preparation for sundevil they'd have consulted with anyone that would have urged a relaxe…

Right, from the sheer scope of the raids I'm sure they thought they were dealing with some sort of syndicate, probably professional criminals branching out. They were absolutely dumbfounded, they didn't know whether to slap the cuffs on me or give me milk and cookies.

Re: LulzSec's 'Topiary' arrested

#65

Post by shpxnvz »

cowboyhero wrote: post #28
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.

Almost positive that's a direct quote toward the end of Alan Moore's V for Vendetta . Which kinda makes me grin and roll my eyes at the same time.

I'd guess that both were derived from Medgar Evers:

You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.

Re: LulzSec's 'Topiary' arrested

#66

Post by chippy »

nikcub wrote: post #43
dlss wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, since no one else is wading in here's what look like the usual suspects to me: - obvious digital connection (forgot to use tor / ipredator / hacked vpn) - timing attacks (keeping normal waking hours for his home country, using a vpn instead of tor) - word frequency attacks (since he wrote a lot of press releases, his word choices may have been cross correlated with a personal blog) - bragging to a friend - gett…

if I were tasked with catching these guys, I would: * setup numerous honeypot open proxies and tor gateways * work with journalists to have all emails and communications forwarded * isolate ddos clients and reverse-engineer command and control. surprisingly many of these trojans are poorly written and have security holes themselves * setup numerous fake twitter profiles and provoking them into responses - things like…

"1337 5p34k was invented so you can not be traced via your vocab/grammar/spelling/phrases etc"

What about txt msg spk?

Re: LulzSec's 'Topiary' arrested

#67

Post by pvarangot »

chippy wrote: post #18

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

If I were to guess it was the same methods they used to "catch" Manning. From my narrow (but not inexistant) knowledge of hacktivism arrests, it always reduces to someone feeling lonely/overtrusting someone on IRC/Jabber.

Re: LulzSec's 'Topiary' arrested

#68

Post by Confusion »

psone wrote: post #48
fragsworth wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone can claim the evidence was destroyed. All of their posts have been archived in many places.

One may still be charged with obstruction of justice if there is a definite attempt to make unavailable evidence needed for a case, even if the unavailability is temporary until a suitable mirror can be found. It's such a broad definition for a criminal charge to have, and in this case I really think they would consider it.

Don't be silly. If a murderer burns the clothes in which he perpetrated the murder, he's not 'destroying evidence' in addition to being a murderer. Something must first have been determined to be evidence, before destroying becomes a criminal act. Neither are you obstructing justice by hiding evidence.

Re: LulzSec's 'Topiary' arrested

#69

Post by jamesaguilar »

pygy_ wrote: post #60
Aloisius wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But the lulz were so loud that I could not hear the core message. They were certainly not primarily activists. At best, that was a scant moral cover for what was basically mass vandalism.
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