LulzSec Teen Bailed Out, Had 750,000 Records

"Monday morning 18-year-old Jake "Topiary" Davis was released on bail on the condition that he did not use the Internet, and that he stick to a curfew enforced by his mother and brother"

He's 18 now. He shouldn't get a juvenile's punishment...

Sooooooooo if you are gonna run 16 vm's doing illegal things, why would you not take the performance hit and use full drive encryption. Anything is breakable sure, but the data shouldnt be sitting their plain jane; its a laptop, go get in on some McWiFi.

I'm not going to argue ethics, as i have a sort of love hate with the hacktivist trend, but maybe they should have a little pamphlet pdf, containing do's and dont's. It is crazy to think people are motivated enough to hack sony and the like, yet are too lazy for some cyoa due diligence. By being easily caught you undermine the entire message you are trying to convey.

I miss 90's hackers/viruses

^there*

Because, as the article indicates, it's unlikely he had any direct involvement with actual 'hacking'. They just need a name a face to publicly crucify right now.

/not saying he's innocent

They are saying he was just a script-kiddie. BTW, 5.5 Mbps not high speed? Granted it is not my 16 Mbps comcast connection, but it is certainly faster then most base level DSL connections.

5.5 megabits per second! That dosen't sound like poor internet to me. 20% of people in the US are still stuck on dial-up.

"Telecoms regulator Ofcom seemingly backed up the defense Monday morning, stating that the Shetland Islands play host to some of Britain's poorest Internet connections. There are no high-speed broadband connections, with the average speed of around 5.5 megabits per second."

LOL... higher then the US average. But apparently that's alright.

Not so anonymous now, little brat?

Lets see...
- Dell laptop
- external 100 GB running 16 different virtual computers.
- details of an attack on Sony
- personal records of around 750,000 individuals including email addresses and passwords
- single-use email address with a lifespan of around ten minutes

pAleeze!The little hacker's attorney must be gettin tips from Jose Biaz.

I'm guessing you two live in either the US or Australia. In any other part of the developed world 5.5 Mbps probably wouldn't be considered "high-speed broadband".

he was bassically the sacrificial lamb

making virtual machines is very easy a baby could do it

you can tell he isnt a real hacker becasue a real hacker would encrypt the whole computer with it set so one password opens 1 operating system and another opens the main

if you use a large enough password it is impossible to break a truecrypt volume at this time


the encryption is just so far ahead of computer speed that even with super computers it would take a long time

The absolute best, and most expensive, offered in my area is 6.0 down / .75 up and I live in a highly populated area of California. D:

Yeah, i typed in a hurry; for clarity, i was implying that the actual hackers/leaders would do well to offer ten minutes of instruction on how to obfuscate ones actions, as when the underlings are caught it damages the root intent of illustrating the ineffectiveness of government/industry.

Also everything i say is under the assumption that he is actually affiliated with lulzsec or any other group(or moniker in anons case), and didnt just dl the listings from twitter; and lets face it, anyone with reading aility and google can set up a vm, and just having a vm isnt exactly incriminating.

The way the article reads it simply says he was in possession of freely available listings and had some vm's running, with a freely available temp email service running; you dont need to be in a special club to meet any of that criteria. Sounds like a shaky case unless they can prove he was actively participating.

Anyone know what kind of charge possession of private account info carries?

(btw sorry if I ramble or repeat, listening in on a conference call atm)

i personally think that he knew what he was doing....he made it look like he was not 100% involved....i think he is guilty

"was displaying a dialogue box for a single-use email address with a lifespan of around ten minutes"

That was the gateway to his *real* hacking software, it had a auto destruct bomb in case something happened to him.

If this guy knows how to run a VM, he won't give a $h!t about your "curfew". I have mixed feeling about LulzSex and Anonymous, so I stay neutral, but it always cracks me up to see the stupidity of the people who don't realize how easy it is to access the Internet nowadays no matter who doesn't want you to do so.

Also, like Shanky said, this guy was running VM's on unencrypted hard drives, which doesnt mean jack.
If this kid is good, he *does* have encrypted hard drives that will take them a while to figure out. But if he doesn't then it IS possible that he was a sympathizer and was just collecting hacked documents that are already out on the internets.

Only after a *REAL* complete scrubdown of his IP and hard drive will tell.....

What's to tell that what the police confiscated was his real setup?? Topiary was doxed a while ago. He had enough time to set himself up as a script kiddie.

I had 8/1,5 five years ago, now have 100/100 (70/50 effective)

HACK THE PLANET!!!! (Hackers - 1995)

Am I missing what the bail was set at?

I agree if he's 18, be prepared to do your time. Most likely Scotland Yard, MI6, FBI, NSA or CIA will interject their opinions for a shorter bail and he'll end up working for the very people he was opposed too.

The real surprise I got from this was a dell laptop was able to run 40 different programs simultaneously.

I highly doubt the 16 VMs referenced were actually being run concurrently on a laptop. He probably just had 16 available.

5.5 is not high speed. The AVERAGE speed in the UK is 10.66Mbps (the US average is 11.36Mbps).

On the topic of the article, he doesnt sound like a hacker at all from anything shown. Anybody that is remotely tech savvy has used what he has used, and if you are a multitasker you will have boatloads of programs open. I mean, I have 20 tabs, steam, fraps, WMP, and a variety of other things running pretty much constantly... and I have no clue how to hack.

i think the problem is that there are idiots in the police (i know thats not fair i recon most are)

that think a process is a program


i have 90 processes open at the mo on win7 and dont have a whole lot running that is visible


this guy at most seems to be a script kiddie

whats wrong with vm's, there a good way to check programs out without infecting pc with viruses and filling it up with junk

I wasn't talking about the VMs. It says in the article there was 40 unspecified programs running in the background. Also, I was being sarcastic lol. Hackers don't use dell..

Wouldn't his IP adress be a private one that wouldn't be possible to track? (ex. 10.0.0.0, 172.16.0.0 or 192.168.0.0) I thought ISPs didn't have a certain IP adress for customers and instead used (I believe they're called) dynamic IP adresses. Any clarification anyone?

if you want to take a more worldly view, America has the SLOWEST high speed internet in the world (developed world). some countries, what we see as our fastest interent is their standard 30$ a month plan.

japan specifically has 100mbit or mb i forget which, up and down for 29$ a month,

5.5mbps is more than adequate to manage a botnet system for a DDoS....



192.168.x.x is an internal IP address. Your understanding here is a bit skewed. ISPs can use either Static or Dynamic IP's depending on their particular system configuration. MY local DSL service uses Static IPs while the local Cable and FiOS services use Dynamic IP's unless you specifically request a Static IP or have a commercial internet account. Both Static and Dynamic IP's can be tracked, but a Dynamic IP requires the IP to be leased for a predetermined period of time after which the lease has to be renewed. A cable, DSL or FiOS modem can maintain a Dynamic IP as long as the connection/lease is maintained. A Dynamic IP typically only changes when a connection is re-established. Whether the IP is Dynamic or Static, it can be traced back to the modem it's assigned to.



Notice they never mention exactly what types or what specific programs were running? You have no way of knowing if maybe he has a few tracert or port scanning apps running, or if he was playing a few tracks on WMP. Honestly, I probably have a half dozen or so of each on various discs around my house. I've also got copies of several versions of the various VNC apps. I've even got a copy of NetBus, NetBuster (removes NetBus) and BackOrifice around here somewhere. It's possible he had software similar to these "apps" running....which would allow him to easily manage a botnet remotely.

@.therabiddeer:

Then you are a threat from users who get attacked cause your computer can be hacked and used withuot you knowing it. Not all hackers are able to find and use such hardware. And for them to hack other hardware they'd need hardware probably not seen as much as your hardware.

Cause if all you need at times is an access point, whats it matter if you have a 10,000$ computer?

But for sack of excuse, my arguement should end your use of use of your computer for the sack of issues of relevence, despite any efforts of hacking or not. But hopefully it dont, yes?

But at least though to say, your computer doesnt have 750,000 things of interest, yes?

But to not have something of usefulness of your own self invites trouble. But maybe not trouble enough, but to say on your part trouble enough might just be. Who knows...I take you dont hack. Yes? Or Right??

So, so far despite anything you do, dont matter, for sack of arguement. Its a bd one, but whats wrong it in terms of issues? I dont know, hard saying or telling really, yes?

But rather hacking within its ownself should say anything different is anyones guess, yes? Complicated to a point of almost the idea of how anything could be said or told. I would say, but of what i say and is is probably two different things and at times i would hope so. But still speculative and subjective. Otherwise, why even the mention, yes? I don't know.

But whats it matter, yes? Hackers hack and systems are in use. But how access of some systems that are in use is subjective and perspective, yes? I would say at times for some reason. Until then the otherwise, Yes?

Still, i find regualr use of many things probably worse of then hcking sometimes, cause of the interest of it has regular use of something always in question, yes?

I don't know, this a ramble topic if it wasn't called one.

As a disclaimer, I wouldn't call myself an expert, but encrypting the data on a drive doesn't really have anything to with his IP address or internet traffic (however, encrypting data through something like a VPN is a different story).

I'm not sure I understand your question correctly, but from what I gather you're asking if using a VM would mask his IP address? It wouldn't, as the traffic ends up in the same place regardless. How computers communicate on a LAN (typically 192.168.0.X on a home setup) is different than what is used to communicate externally (a single IP address). Some ISPs use dynamic addresses, some use static, but they all keep logs which is why proxies, encryption, etc. are employed.