LulzSec chat logs sheds light on the secretive hackers
It was a tight-knit and enigmatic group finding its feet in the febrile world of hacker collectives, where exposing and embarrassing your targets is just as important as protecting your own identity.
But leaked logs from LulzSec's private chatroom – seen, and published today, by the Guardian – provide for the first time a unique, fly-on-the-wall insight into a team of audacious young hackers whose inner workings have until now remained opaque.
LulzSec is not, despite its braggadocio, a large – or even coherent – organisation. The logs reveal how one hacker known as "Sabu", believed to be a 30-year-old security consultant, effectively controls the group of between six and eight people, keeping the others in line and warning them not to discuss what they have done with others; another, "Kayla", provides a large botnet – networks of infected computers controlled remotely – to bring down targeted websites with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks; while a third, "Topiary", manages the public image, including the LulzSec Twitter feed.
