Two UK Lulzsec Suspects Plead Guilty To DDoS Charges 82
judgecorp writes "Two teens have pleaded guilty to taking part in Lulzsec attacks on the U.S.'s CIA and Britain's SOCA. Ryan Cleary and Jake Davis, aged 19 and 18 respectively, admit to denial of service attacks. Cleary has also been charged in the U.S., but is unlikely to face extradition."
However, "... both Cleary and Davis denied allegations they posted 'unlawfully obtained confidential computer data' to public websites including LulzSec.com, Pirate Bay, and PasteBin, in order to encourage offenses contrary to the Serious Crime Act." Two others involved pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Re:first post (Score:4, Funny)
Two teens have pleaded guilty to taking part in Lulzsec attacks
Since they have pleaded guilty, it has made the world a betterer place to live in. Double plus good.
Age (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Age (Score:5, Insightful)
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Seems likely. Young and impressionable makes for good cannon fodder for those who are actually running the show.
"those who are actually running the show" are probably also teenagers or possibly young adults. As far as I can tell all targets have been accused of doing unethical things and that kind of activism is almost exclusively done by idealistic youngsters.
Lulzsec is also pretty harmless since it is only dealing with hacktivism and doesn't really try to do "real world damage". To become a Lulzsec you pretty much have that common combination of acting like an ass on a global scale and have an incompetent IT-depart
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The "hackers" who harassed Sony executives were random people from anonymous, and most likely, not hackers. The people who brought down the PSN are still unidentified. Lulzsec did hack and DDoS Sony, but it was nowhere near on the scale of the PSN hack. They did smaller stuff like hacking Sony Pictures/Music and releasing source code from the Sony Dev Network.
I wish people would actually know about the topic before giving their ignorant two cents, I mean, this stuff was being co
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For many months it was the FBI running the show and were actively enticing minors into committing criminal acts, which were carried. Note, the FBI also did criminally fail to charge Hector Xavier Monsegur with the serious charge of child abuse for recruiting and leading minors in criminal acts, making those FBI agents guilty of being accessories after the fact and conspiring to obstruct the course of justice, the FBI even lied in court about Hector Xavier Monsegur role, reducing his lead role of child abu
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Or they were low hanging fruit. Someone they had a blizzard of info on who they could make some feeble connection to the group.
In the US the ATF sets up stooges all the time.
Re:Age (Score:5, Insightful)
They may even have just cherry picked the only ones they could find of legal age. I can't believe they only had evidence on two of them.
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They may even have just cherry picked the only ones they could find of legal age. I can't believe they only had evidence on two of them.
The others all had richer, more connected parents.
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The age of criminal responsibility in the UK is 10 in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and 12 in Scotland. (There are ongoing debates over whether the age should be increased.)
However, it's still possible some younger people were identified but not prosecuted.
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Best time to do online shenigans is when you're under 15. seriously.
because "victims" have to show actual damages and in most jurisdictions it will not show up later on your record + the police don't know how to handle you.
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Damn what utter and contemptible trade craft. They got...caught. *snicker*
At least they should have gone up in a pyre of thermite, hard drives and silicon.
Now they need more silicone to survive jail.
Not a troll, I'm just damned to pseudo-poetic babbling when disappointed.
Are they actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or are they just two of the many who were gullible enough to participate in a LOIC attack and are now presented as the big bad hackers since that's pretty much all we can get our hands at?
Somehow it smells a bit like presenting a few street dealer busts as the big hit against drug cartels...
Are they actually...unknown? (Score:2, Insightful)
How could it be otherwise, since one of the points about such "anonymous" groups is that there is no leadership.
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No known leadership, you mean. There's no doubt in my mind that, like with any other organisation, there's only a handful of people who take initiative and decide what's going to happen, regardless of whether they're officially leaders or not.
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Correction, they ALSO got the real guys. These are just a few irc tag-alongs they threw in for fun.
Re:Are they actually... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/18/patriot_games [foreignpolicy.com] hints at larger undercover operations in the 1990's surrounding groups in the USA. Infiltration, undercover agents and informants. Go back to the 1960's - no peace or rights group in the community was going to be active without a file.
The idea that the internet was not going to get the same careful monitoring seems to be based on the hardware needed.
They just need to bait people with a good story and well meaning site. Skills and names drift in. New informants created, a show trial and promotions enjoyed.
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According to other articles, Cleary ran the Lulzsec IRC server as well as a large botnet that he used to DDoS victims. One of the others that plead not guilty was the infamous 'Kayla', who pretended to be a 16 year old girl but was actually a 25 year old trans-gender.
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Jake Davis aka Topiary was one ofones who also was involved with cracking [youtube.com] one of Westboro Baptist Church's website during a live interview with the Phelps on the David Pakman show. He was more than the average click-and-run an automated DDoS client.
DDoS is Hacking (Score:5, Insightful)
And making instant noodles is cooking.
I can't believe their wasting their time to go after these teenage kids. There's plenty more where they came from, and ruining their future is only going to give the pro-lulzsec crowd ammunition. It's a really dumb move, and certainly not what I would do if I were the prosecution. Then again, I'm fairly my having a brain excludes me from being part of those clowns.
What these people who do their best to take down groups like LulzSec, Anonymous, etc. don't understand is that you can't take them down. This isn't a militia, a terrorist organization, or a code monkey who wants to get back at the work that laid him off: this is an idea, and a very powerful one. Anonymous's very nature is that it is anyone and everyone, there is no centralized network. LulzSec does not elect presidents, and they do not have a chain of command.
The idea is that individual liberty and the common good is important above all else. Censorship and tyranny stands in the way of this goal, and the only thing these companies are doing is adding fuel to the fire, by proving they're the very entities that need to be stopped.
The only way anyone could possibly put this to an end is if they arrested and detained every free thinker, anyone who believe in liberty and the free exchange of information, and anyone who won't bend over backwards when Uncle Sam comes to violate our rights and freedoms. We have a word for that, it's called a dystopia.
Re:DDoS is Hacking (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DDoS is Hacking (Score:5, Insightful)
Has that method ever worked in the history of mankind?
Fear doesn't create compliance, just secrecy. And harm (physical or otherwise) doesn't only create fear, but also hate. So they are turning an existing enemy into a better hidden and more hateful enemy. What a fantastic result, they must be proud of their strategical prowess.
Re:DDoS is Hacking (Score:4, Insightful)
Has that method ever worked in the history of mankind?
Yes it has, actually. Many people I know would rob banks if they were sure police wouldn't bother to arrest them.
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Um. That's not the same thing at all. We catch most bank robbers. If we only caught 1 in 1000, even if they were summarily executed, people would be robbig banks all the damn time.
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So they are turning an existing enemy into a better hidden and more hateful enemy.
So? You can't make people love you, but you can definitely make them fear you. And fear is better for control anyway.
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Yes. It works quite well actually.
Re:DDoS is Hacking (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't believe their wasting their time to go after these teenage kids. There's plenty more where they came from, and ruining their future is only going to give the pro-lulzsec crowd ammunition. (...) I'm fairly my having a brain excludes me from being part of those clowns. What these people who do their best to take down groups like LulzSec, Anonymous, etc. don't understand is that you can't take them down. This isn't a militia, a terrorist organization, or a code monkey who wants to get back at the work that laid him off: this is an idea, and a very powerful one.
No, they're the same kind of rebel teenagers that used to do vandalism and tagging and in general rage against the machine when I grew up. They got no plan, no agenda except to strike out randomly and cause mayhem, with gang leaders shouting "let's flip that car" but little more than that, a mindless beast with zero attention span. Script kiddies and their wannabe groupies that would like to be script kiddies are exactly the same in online form, and I don't mind the police giving them a good slap and telling them to grow up. Go back to what you wrote, when did you last see very powerful clowns? Even when they do cause mayhem, they're still just clowns.
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Relax, they are just kids and the act of randomly vandalizing is just part of the learning process
That you think random acts of vandalism is a natural part of growing up speaks volumes of you and presumably the shitstain you grew up in. While I'm not going to make any claims of sainthood the people that went past pranks and looting the apple tree and into pure vandalism were mostly assholes that had no respect for other people or other people's property or other people's work. Hey there's a nice garden where someone has worked many hours to make a flower bed, let's just tear it up for the lulz. That you
Re:Parent is a moron (Score:4, Insightful)
You seem to completely fail to understand how the mind of kinds work at that age. I'm no expert at psychology but this is plain obvious. Most of them are still in the process of developing their adulthood and when every adult around them seems to disagree with their thoughts, it is plain natural the kids start absorbing the thoughts from somewhere else which they identify with. In the streets, that person would probably be some group leader. Having that, then it is just hormones and the willing to impress others that makes them behave badly - because unfortunately, failing to respect others and destroying stuff is the easiest way to show that "you have the balls". THIS IS WHERE SOCIETY FAILS COMPLETELY.
At this age, kids actually need some good leadership. Sport teams actually provide that up to some point, with an adult coach giving good directions to kids while agreeing and motivating them during the games. Hackerspaces are a good place to motivate and giving them good directions too. But we need way more than that. Schools need extra-curricular practical activities ....
So this is were I disagree with you. We don't need to call the police when they behave badly, we don't need to marginalize them! We do need to impress them and grab their attention and only them, we can teach them a valuable lesson.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You seem to completely fail to understand how the mind of kinds work at that age. I'm no expert at psychology but this is plain obvious. Most of them are still in the process of developing their adulthood and when every adult around them seems to disagree with their thoughts, it is plain natural the kids start absorbing the thoughts from somewhere else which they identify with.
Who cares? It is "natural" for hungry predator to eat a human and yet we don't allow that. Those kids are going to live in society and they have to live by society standards, no matter how "unnatural" those standards are for them. They can either break and conform or spend their lives in place where they cannot be danger to others - prison.
In the streets, that person would probably be some group leader. Having that, then it is just hormones and the willing to impress others that makes them behave badly - because unfortunately, failing to respect others and destroying stuff is the easiest way to show that "you have the balls". THIS IS WHERE SOCIETY FAILS COMPLETELY.
The only failing I see here is that this kind of behaviour was not driven out of them earlier. Spare the rod, spoil the child.
At this age, kids actually need some good leadership. Sport teams actually provide that up to some point, with an adult coach giving good directions to kids while agreeing and motivating them during the games. Hackerspaces are a good place to motivate and giving them good directions too. But we need way more than that. Schools need extra-curricular practical activities ....
So this is were I disagree with you. We don't need to call the police when they behave badly, we don't need to marginalize them! We do need to impress them and grab their attention and only them, we can teach them a valuable lesson.
Yes, of course. Lets make hooliganism mainst
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Who cares? It is "natural" for hungry predator to eat a human and yet we don't allow that. Those kids are going to live in society and they have to live by society standards, no matter how "unnatural" those standards are for them. They can either break and conform or spend their lives in place where they cannot be danger to others - prison.
Who cares? It is "natural" for hungry predator to eat a human and yet we don't allow that. Those kids are going to live in society and they have to live by society standards, no matter how "unnatural" those standards are for them. They can either break and conform or spend their lives in place where they cannot be danger to others - prison.
uuuhaa! Talking about extreme!
You do realize there is a learning process, kids don't turn into adults in one day? You cannot just dump social ethics and standards into them and expect them to learn! You do know that the human learning process is based on trial-error, right?
Also, what would you do if someone told you when you were a kid that you cannot play GTA / Left 4 death anymore because it is too violent? Would you just STFU and obey? It is because of this restriction / impose the rules nonsense mentali
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uuuhaa! Talking about extreme! You do realize there is a learning process, kids don't turn into adults in one day? You cannot just dump social ethics and standards into them and expect them to learn!
'Turning into adult' is a slow process that starts at young age and is guided but constant pressure from parents to adapt to social norms. But many parents instead choose total leniency, 'let kids be kids' and then they are surprised when their precious snowflake gets completely unmanageable as teenager. Those "kids" from TFA are 18 and 19, they are adults in eyes of law and at this point they should be able to take responsibility for their actions. If they were allowed to stay kids for 18 years and only n
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Those "kids" from TFA are 18 and 19, they are adults in eyes of law and at this point they should be able to take responsibility for their actions
Ooops! Sorry I thought we were talking about a younger age, I misread TFA. At 18 it is indeed expected they have enough maturity already.
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An all too often quoted phrase, "Spare the rod, spoil the child." And I say this because it's wrong, sparing the rod saves the child from a life of violence, as the APA has so wonderfully pointed out time and time again. Corporal punishment is not the answer.
"Ah!" you may retort, "I meant a metaphysical rod!"
Think for a moment. If I do remember the article correctly (I dare say I do), then at least one of the teenagers is a straight-A student. Not your vandalizing, druggie, won't behave son -- someone w
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At this age, kids actually need some good leadership. Sport teams actually provide that up to some point, with an adult coach giving good directions to kids while agreeing and motivating them during the games. Hackerspaces are a good place to motivate and giving them good directions too. But we need way more than that. Schools need extra-curricular practical activities ....
What we need is leadership that is not completely ethically bankrupt. These are kids who care about something. We don't need to placa
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My point was that it is our fault (society) if the kids wander around in the streets without anything to do
You assume they did this because they didn't have anything better to do. Did you consider that they looked at the world and concluded that striking out in impotent rage was possibly the best thing they actually could do? It won't work, of course, but at least it's better than collaborating.
Well.. Somewhat agreed. Extra-curricular activities put the kids busy with something, shows them that they might
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Re:DDoS is Hacking (Score:4, Funny)
Then again, I'm fairly my having a brain excludes me from being part of those clowns.
I think you accidentally a word.
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I accidentally my coffee too :(
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And how North Korea can treat the people they can is a sign of immaturity of the whole world government ecosystem. Let's get our logic straight people.
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I'm sorry, but you are essentially saying "crime" can't be taken down, as its not a centrally controlled organisation, militia, terrorist organisation - these people, whether part of a larger "organisation" or not, committed a crime and should be punished for it (if found guilty).
LulzSec, Anonymous etc has got nothing to do with hippy shit like "free thinking" and everything to do with getting away with what they can, when they can - if people purporting to be acting under their banner commit crimes, then t
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Holy strawman batman! Is that what I said? But I do appreciate you equating a DDoS attack to fire bombing a bus HQ, I like your analogies, very colorful.
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I only have half a brain before I get my coffee ;)
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I can't believe their wasting their time to go after these teenage kids. There's plenty more where they came from, and ruining their future is only going to give the pro-lulzsec crowd ammunition.
At eighteen and nineteen they are no longer kids.
It's time the geek stopped making excuses when any of his own are looking at hard time.
Anonymous's very nature is that it is anyone and everyone, there is no centralized network. LulzSec does not elect presidents, and they do not have a chain of command.
It is not anyone and everyone.
The mob has its leaders.
Those who start the ball rolling and those who keep it in motion.
Patterns emerge over time. People talk too much. Never more so than when they are in it for lulz. The kick. The drug-like high.
You are always more exposed, never as anonymous on the Internet, as you think you are,
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Really? At eighteen you magically get automatic adult knowledge? That didn't happen for me, maybe it got mixed up in the mail.
Re:Hacking is not Cracking (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be a prat.
"I didn't break into your house to get photos of your wife, you used a lock that wasn't compliant to British Standard BS3621 as required by most insurer's and I overpowered the only person in the house who was your granny. I just exploited your vulnerabilities."
Sorry, can't do me for breaking-and-entering, criminal damage, theft, assault, copyright infringement, privacy invasion, ....
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"They didn't crack anything, they used vulnerabilities to gain access, there is a big difference."
you are correct. Someone that does real hacks are truly skilled, the other is nothing more than a ankle biting script kiddie.
And you must suck at IT security. I can implement three layers of custom built firewalls for about £500
What kind of overpriced junk are you buying?
Who's lulzing now? (Score:3)
18 is a legal adult. These aren't kids, and they knew what they were doing was wrong. They didn't care because, you know, the lulz.
Should the "real kingpins" be the ones in the dock? Sure. But in the meantime, should these people be held responsible for their actions? Yes, by all means. They were the strong preying on the weak, and if the law doesn't exist to prevent that, then what is its purpose?
Let them be a lesson to you all... (Score:3)
Only a idiot hacks from his home or a place they can identify you from OR you get bloated and start letting people know who you are and you start boasting about your "sploits"
Hacking 101 stuff. Why are these kiddies not learning the golden rules?
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unfortunate... (Score:2)
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Their lives will forever be altered
Who's fault is that?
"teens" (Score:1)
They are both adults and should be treated like and expected to act like adults. And, they should receive adult punishment.
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At least in England they are old enough to buy a beer.