FBI arrests suspected Lulzsec, Anonymous hackers

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrested at least two alleged members of hacker groups Lulz Security and Anonymous Thursday in San Francisco (California) and Phoenix (Arizona). US-based FoxNews cited an FBI official who said government agents were also serving search warrants in New Jersey, Minnesota and Montana. It said the official described one individual - Cody Kretsinger - as part of the LulzSec group, which had been linked to a number of cyberattacks on high-profile sites earlier this year. Kretsinger, 23, from Phoenix, was charged with conspiracy and the unauthorized impairment of a protected computer, according to the federal indictment unsealed Thursday morning. He uses the online handle "recursion" and was linked to the hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment by using an SQL injection to get confidential information. The indictment showed he and co-conspirators distributed stolen information by posting it on LulzSec's website before announcing the attack on Twitter. Kretsinger also allegedly erased the hard drives used to carry out the Sony attack, the indictment said. He is expected to appear in a Phoenix federal court Thursday afternoon. In San Francisco, the Los Angeles FBI field office arrested an alleged member of Anonymous. The FoxNews report quoted an FBI official as saying the suspected hacker is homeless and alleged to have been involved in cyberattacks on Santa Cruz County government websites. Anonymous is a loose collection of hacktivists inspired by WikiLeaks and its head Julian Assange to fight for Internet freedoms. Its members had hacked into websites, some of them defacing the targets. Others shut down servers, and scrawled messages across screens web-wide. In contrast, LulzSec’s attacks were largely done “for the lulz" — Internet slang meaning “for the laughs." Earlier arrests Last July, 16 alleged Anonymous members had been arrested in the U.S. and the U.K. In London, police arrested the first alleged member of the LulzSec group last June 20, a 19-year-old teen named Ryan Cleary. — RSJ, GMA News