EA Cyber-Special: What is LulzSec? And Is It More than a Bit of LOL and Mischief? (Dunne)

LulzSec's "Pierre DuBois"James Dunne writes his first article for EA:

LulzSec --- the mischievous internet group responsible for infiltrating servers at Sony, Sega and the International Monetary Fund, as well as disabling Government websites on both sides of the Atlantic --- has expanded its operation, codenamed AntiSec, to South America. Early on Wednesday, the group claimed to have disabled two websites of the Brazilian Government, Portal Brazil and the site of President Dilma Vana Rousseff.

The group maintains it is acting simply "for the Lulz", a play on "LOL", getting amusement from random digital anarchy. Fridays become "FF", the designated day of the week for dissemination of stolen material.

But is there a significance beyond mischief and laughs?

LulzSec releases any material it gains on Torrent servers such as The Pirate Bay or directly on the Internet, as it did with user accounts and passwords, merchandise vouchers, and network vulnerabilities from Sony and Sega. Data from the IMF has yet to surface, but if similar methods have been used, given glaring flaws in the organisation’s security, it is likely a reasonable amount of data is on its way soon. This Friday, Lulz have hinted at releasing stolen data from the recent national census in Britain. Whether it is a hoax or not --- Glen Watson, director at Britain's Office for National Statistics, claims there has been no breach –-- Internet users are awaiting another release.

In an article for The Guardian of London, Paul Carr criticised the skill of the group, suggesting their primary method –-- the Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDoS) –-- could be launched by monkeys for all its complexity. Adding that the Central Intelligence Agency and Britian's Serious Organised Crime Agency, two of the group's recent targets, "were not “hacked” in any meaningful sense", Carr denied the group "hacker" status but continued to refer to them as a hacking group.

That claim by Carr points to a persistent misunderstanding and misuse of terms for these activities. "Hacker" simply means a person, skilled in the use of a computer or electronics and programming, chooses to push the digital envelope and develop technology. Hackers created the Internet.

For want of an accurate word, "cracker" describes a person who misuses such abilities. Beyond this there are a number of blurred lines and identities, but the reality is that "hacktivist" groups like LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) will inevitably compete with each other with two main consequences.

First, these groups, not unlike "terrorist" groups who pursue publicity for their operation, will race versus one another for increasingly important targets. Second, governments will be forced to focus their attention on groups causing what is essentially superficial damage to websites. Paradoxically, that focus may release pressure on other crackers, giving them more opportunity to cause actual mayhem.

Yet the damning of LulzSec as miscreants or mischief-makers overlooks the significance of their movement, as it gains thousands of followers each hour at the peak of its publicity and activity. The mainstay behind this figure is Twitter, which has aided similar movements in the past two years, such as Anonymous’s attacks on Scientology or the spread of Wikileaks’ material.

Lulzsec, which has teamed up with Anonymous this week, is creating a new wave of support for its anarchical efforts by reversing the usual direction of Internet groups. Rather than beginning its life in IRC channels populated with the programming-literate, Lulzsec's emergence on Twitter made it accessible to anyone surfing the internet. Only now is it moving back into IRC channels and image boards, crucially bringing its mass of Twitter followers and anyone else "along for the lulz".

In less than 72 hours, LulzSec posted three separate IRC channels, publicly available from two clicks rather than download of a complex client. The amount of directed traffic crashed the channels within minutes. Meanwhile, the group used Twitter to welcome other groups to their "cause" –-- they claim that the attack on the Brazilian Government was actually carried out by a new franchise, LulzSecBrazil.

Critics of LulzSec's methods are right when they claim that the attacks are relatively simple –-- but the organising of hundreds of thousands of active supporters is fiendishly difficult. In choosing Twitter, LulzSec has diversified the resources of Internet miscreants beyond "nerds" and "geeks" to anyone with a digital device, from cell phones to laptops. Everyone is welcome, with targets ranging from big business to governments, the kinds of organisations likely to draw the biggest crowds in need of a new way to vent their frustrations.

In expanding their support in such a vast manner, LulzSec has reinvented both "hacking" and public protest for the 21st Century.