Hacker’s simple mistake leads to five other arrests
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Reporting from Los Angeles and Chicago — It took one simple mistake for Hector Xavier Monsegur, a hacker who goes by the name Sabu, to get caught by the FBI.
That mistake led not only to his arrest but also to that of five other alleged hackers who, according to a grand jury indictment, have ties to high-profile underground groups online: LulzSec, AntiSec and Anonymous.
The indictment filed in a U.S. District Court in New York ties the arrested men to online attacks against Sony, Fox, PBS, the Central Intelligence Agency, Visa, MasterCard and PayPal.
According to the indictment, the men broke into computer networks, deleted data and stole confidential and personal information belonging to more than 800,000 people.
Aside from Monsegur, the five others arrested were: Ryan Ackroyd; Jake Davis; Darren Martyn; Donncha O’Cearrbhail, who allegedly hacked under the handle Palladium; and Jeremy Hammond, who allegedly hacked under the name Anarchaos, the indictment said.
Ackroyd and Davis are residents of Britain; the others are U.S. residents.
The arrests came after Monsegur, 28, mistakenly logged into a chat room without covering his computer’s Internet protocol address, according to a report by Fox News, which first reported the indictment.
With that lapse, FBI investigators had the information needed to identify what computer Monsegur was using and eventually where he lived and who he was, the report said.
The FBI persuaded him to turn on his fellow hackers, threatening jail time that he wanted to avoid because the New Yorker is the guardian of two young children, according to the report. Monsegur pleaded guilty Aug. 15 to 12 counts of “computer hacking conspiracies and other crimes,” the FBI said. He is awaiting sentencing.
The indictment described the men as “elite computer hackers” who defaced websites and launched “malicious cyber assaults.”
Sometimes the motivation for the attacks was simply for “lulz,” Internet slang that could be interpreted as laughs, humor or amusement, the indictment said.
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