The rise of LulzSec: a hacking chronology

While the Lulz Security group of hackers was only founded in May of 2011, their rise to internet infamy was largely attributed to their high profile targets. Their motto reads, “The world’s leaders in high-quality entertainment at your expense”.

Since their formation, LulzSec targets have included:

• Fox.com – Following comments by Fox that rapper “Common” was “vile”, LulzSec launched an attack on Fox.com. The group released passwords and LinkedIn profiles of Fox employee’s, as well as names of 73,000 X Factor contestants.
• UK ATM Logs – The group followed the Fox hacking with the release of transaction logs for some 3,100 ATM machines in the UK.
• Sony – Following the hacking of Sony’s PlayStation Network, LulzSec targeted the company and managed to compromise a claimed 1,000,000 accounts and leak the information online.
• Black & Berg Cybersecurity Consulting – The cyber-security company presented a challenge to hack their website, with a reward of $10,000 and a position at the company for anyone who could hack into their site. While LulzSec was successful in hacking the site, they declined the prize, claiming, “We do it for the Lulz.”
• Pron.com – The online pornography website was hacked by LulzSec, who released around 26,000 e-mail and password combinations to the site, some of which belonged to Malaysian government employees as well as US military personnel.
• Titanic Take-Down Tuesday – LulzSec attacked various websites including Minecraft, League of Legends, the Escapist and FinFisher. The login server of MMORPG Eve Online, Heroes of Newerth, and League of legends were targeted at the same time.
• InfraGard – The company, an affiliate of the FBI, say its sites were hacked, with member e-mails and the user database leaked.
• US Government – The sites of senate.gov and cia.gov were hacked in mid June 2011, with the root directory of the former leaked, and the latter suffering over 2 hours of downtime.

This long list of hack attacks in a short period of time was abruptly cut short when LulzSec announced their disbandment on the 26h of June. While the group claimed that they never meant to take the hacking past the 50 day mark, many believe that the group was responding to pressure applied by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.

With the group coming out of “retirement” to launch hack attacks against newspapers owned by News Corporation, it isn’t clear whether LulzSec will continue with their hacking attacks in the face of mounting pressure from various law enforcement agencies, though one thing is certain, the group managed to bring online hacking to the forefront of media attention. Thanks to its high profile targets, variety of hacking attempts, and apparent moral high ground, LulzSec has cemented its place in internet history.