Ryan Cleary, 19, and Jake Davis, 18 of hacking crew LulzSec have pleaded guilty to hacking accusations of websites like the Pentagon, the CIA, the U.K.’s National Health Service, News International, sheesh. They will probably try to throw the book at these boys. Hit the jump for details on their trial.
Two members of the computer hacking group Lulzsec have pleaded guilty to charges they attacked several high-profile websites.
Ryan Cleary, 19, and Jake Davis, 18, admitted being part of Lulzsec, an offshoot of the Anonymous collective.
They and two others – Ryan Ackroyd, 25, and a 17-year-old boy – deny other similar hacking charges.
Lulzsec claimed responsibility for attacking the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) website.
Mr Cleary, from Essex; Mr Davis, from the Shetland Isles; Mr Ackroyd from South Yorkshire and the unnamed 17-year-old will all face trial in April 2013.
Splinter group
Mr Cleary also faces charges in the US, where he stands accused of breaking into a number of websites, including that of the US X Factor, in order to deface them and steal personal details.
Lulzsec emerged as a splinter group of the Anonymous hacking collective in May 2011.
Their name stood for Lulz Security – where “Lulz” is a play on words of the popular internet phrase “lol”, meaning “laugh out loud”.
They employed techniques to flood websites with high traffic – known as a DDoS attack – in order to render them unusable.
Lulzsec claimed to have attacked News International, whose website for The Sun was defaced with a false story suggesting that the newspaper’s owner Rupert Murdoch had died.
Lulzsec had previously posted a story on American broadcaster PBS’s website suggesting that deceased rapper Tupac Shakur was in fact alive.
