
Lulzsec: UK men plead guilty to hacking charges - gerryg
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18577609
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Paul_S
It's depressing when all the biggest governmental agencies in the world can
catch are a few teenagers with scripts.

At the same time we just accept multimillion crime groups and governments
wrecking havoc because they're just too darn hard to catch.

~~~
gouranga
I think you nailed it there. It's the governments I find the most
objectionable as they are pretty hard to bring to justice.

~~~
EdwardQ
Indeed, it even comes on the same day the British prime minister makes a
speech where he takes benefits away from the young who are struggling to find
work and uses the term "culture of entitlement".

This from a landed multi-millionaire and without a hint of irony.

~~~
gouranga
The Tories have always kept the poor as poor as possible. Its where they like
them. In fact they'd rather everyone was poor.

I'm 300 quid a month down since the unelected fuckers took over and all I've
seen is money pissed up the wall on that dreaded word: austerity. If I was a
saving money consultant I'd be rich.

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scorch
Is there a story of how they were caught? They did have pretty good protection
against it. Was it a slip somewhere? Did their pride take over so they told
too many of their friends, who may have turned them in?

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pyre
Sabu helped the FBI. According to Wikipedia:

    
    
      On August 15, he pleaded guilty to several hacking
      charges and agreed to cooperate with the FBI. Over
      the following seven months he successfully unmasked
      the other members of the group.

~~~
Scramblejams
To that I would add that Sabu was found because (according to what I read) he
once signed into a Lulzsec IRC channel without masking his residential IP. So
yes, there was a slip, which led to Sabu's cooperation.

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cldrope
There was a slip which led to his capture. Instead of paying the unfettered
price for the crimes he committed, he ratted out his friends in a blatant
abuse of the system in order to lessen his punishment.

The lesson for today kids, is never commit a crime alone, so you have someone
to rat out on for that plea deal!

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danielweber
Why are plea bargains to help capture more people an abuse of the system?

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freehunter
Agreed. I'd rather see all of them go down with lessened punishment than one
go down while the rest are off the hook. Although I don't like plea bargains
which let the squealer off the hook.

~~~
cldrope
That's the point. If they were doing their job and interrogating well as well
as investigating well they'd catch them all just like Sabu. Unfortunately
they're not and it's easier to offer a plea deal after a short period of
intimidation so they do that. I think they should all pay, but this way they
just abuse something built into the system that was made as an incentive for
people they didn't think they COULD catch otherwise.

~~~
freehunter
With Sabu, they caught him on mere chance. He connected directly to IRC from
his home address, without proxies or going to a wifi hotspot to hide himself.
Not everyone will make that mistake, and then it becomes infinitely harder to
find them. It's about resource management.

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klaut
Funny how the title says "men" and then you discover that those are just two
kids of 19 and 18 years old. I was expecting to read about some serious cyber
criminals...

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HeyLaughingBoy
So... you're saying they shouldn't be considered adults at age 18, then?

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Paul_S
18 years threshold is just an odd convention. Biologically it's closer to 12
but the legal and cultural threshold varies wildly all over the planet. My
rule of thumb: if you don't have to make a living - you're a kid. Enjoy it
while it lasts.

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jiggy2011
By "hacking" here , they basically just mean DDOS right?

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cldrope
When they call Anonymous a hacking collective, you know they're either too
stupid, or too corrupt to say it like it is.

They're just a bunch of stupid kids, and I wouldn't label what Anonymous as a
whole is doing as hacking regardless of how you painted it. Lulzsec on the
hand...are a bunch of kids who learned TRICKS before they gained the knowledge
that comes with it.

After years of learning and you get to a point of finding exploits yourself,
you understand at this point WHY doing things is a bad idea.

They skipped the learning phase and just learned some stupid tricks that
allowed them to do a lot of damage while knowing little.

~~~
freehunter
It brings to mind the old infosec adage: What's the difference between hacking
and pentesting? Permission.

The best hackers learn quickly to become security researchers/GRC/application
security/etc. The rest end up in jail or swimming in debt from the lawsuits.
It's okay to break things as long as you've been given permission to break
them, and generally that permission comes with a clause to give advice on how
to make sure it doesn't get broken again.

It's natural selection in the hacker realm. If you want to survive, you have
to play by the rules.

