Welfare Recipient Leader Of LulzSec Hacking Group Turns Informant, Arrests Made

By Susan Duclos

Via a Fox News exclusive, the leader of the LulzSec hacking group, Hector Xavier Monsegur aka Sabu, turns informant after being caught which results in the arrests of the top members of the infamous computer hacking group.

Law enforcement agents on two continents swooped in on top members of the infamous computer hacking group LulzSec early this morning, and acting largely on evidence gathered by the organization’s brazen leader -- who sources say has been secretly working for the government for months -- arrested three and charged two more with conspiracy.

Charges against four of the five were based on a conspiracy case filed in New York federal court, FoxNews.com has learned. An indictment charging the suspects, who include two men from Great Britain, two from Ireland and an American in Chicago, is expected to be unsealed Tuesday morning in the Southern District of New York.

“This is devastating to the organization,” said an FBI official involved with the investigation. “We’re chopping off the head of LulzSec.”

The offshoot of the loose network of hackers, Anonymous, believed to have caused billions of dollars in damage to governments, international banks and corporations, was allegedly led by a shadowy figure FoxNews.com has identified as Hector Xavier Monsegur. Working under the Internet alias “Sabu,” the unemployed, 28-year-old father of two allegedly commanded a loosely organized, international team of perhaps thousands of hackers from his nerve center in a public housing project on New York’s Lower East Side. After the FBI unmasked Monsegur last June, he became a cooperating witness, sources told FoxNews.com.

“They caught him and he was secretly arrested and now works for the FBI,” a source close to Sabu told FoxNews.com.

More at Fox News.

Interesting side note- Monsegur was unemployed welfare recipient and operated out of a public housing projects in New York City.

In other words, taxpayers funded Monsegur's illegal activities.

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Anonymous Hackers News: DOJ, FBI, U.S. Copyright And Many More Hit By Hacker Group

By Susan Duclos

Immediately after the DOJ took down a number of file sharing sites, the hacker group named Anonymous hit the U.S. Department of Justice, Recording Industry of America, Motion Picture Association of America and Universal Music, with denial of service attacks.

On Thursday afternoon, Anonymous claimed credit for cyberattacks that knocked offline the websites of the U.S. Department of Justice, Recording Industry of America, Motion Picture Association of America and Universal Music. The so-called denial of service attacks that overwhelmed those sites with junk traffic came less than an hour after the Justice Department announced the takedown of the Mega sites, along with the arrest of former hacker and Mega founder Kim Dotcom and six others, who are being indicted on charges of copyright infringement and money laundering.

“One thing is certain: EXPECT US!,” wrote the Anonymous-linked Anonops Twitter feed Thursday just after the Mega raid, adding a hashtag for Megaupload.

“Anonymous/Megaupload backlash update: http://RIAA.ORG is now Tango Down,” wrote the Twitter feed Anonnews less than one hour later, as other Anonymous feeds claimed credit for downing Justice.gov and Universalmusic.com.

[SNIP]

The raid on the Mega sites, which were massively popular among Anonymous’ young, copyright-flouting contingent of the Web, come just as the Internet is mobilized for protest against Hollywood’s copyright regime. Wednesday marked a largely successful day of protest against the copyright-enforcing Stop Online Piracy and the Protect IP Act, with Reddit, Wikipedia and other popular sites going dark in protest of the bills. The Department of Justice’s raid on the Mega sites just a day later must seem to many in the anti-copyright movement as a retaliatory move aimed at showing that even without SOPA or PIPA, law enforcement can take action against sites that Hollywood accuses of copyright infringement.

Updates from Forbes show that The U.S. Copyright office and FBI.gov were also hit hard by the group.

Here is a question to think on: If the U.S. Government cannot protect their own sites from a group of hackers, how safe do we feel about their capabilities in protecting our Internet against cyber terrorism coming from our enemies?

Hat Tip Candice Lanier's Tech News.