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 isn't anything new, this kind of hacking has been going on since the 80s - they've just taken a different approach with the media. And snitching is always how hacker groups fall.
This is essentially how all law enforcement investigations work, actually. Drugs, hacking, graffiti, white collar crime, whatever. Get a good snitch and you'll get the whole organization eventually.
LulzSec isn't anything new, this kind of hacking has been going on since the 80s - they've just taken a different approach with the media. And snitching is always how hacker groups fall.
This is essentially how all law enforcement investigations work, actually. Drugs, hacking, graffiti, white collar crime, whatever. Get a good snitch and you'll get the whole organization eventually.