Met police arrest alleged Lulzsec member amid confusion over UK census hack

THE LONDON METROPOLITAN POLICE has arrested a man apparently connected with the hacker group Lulzsec that gained recent notoriety for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) and hacking attacks against a number of companies and organisations.

The Met's central e-crime unit arrested the 19-year-old in Wickford, Essex, where he was held under the Computer Misuse Act and the Fraud Act. He was taken to a police station in central London, where he is being questioned. Essex police and the FBI were also involved in the arrest.

The Met has not yet confirmed that the suspect is believed to be a member of Lulzsec, but it highlighted that his arrest is in connection with attacks on "a number of international business and intelligence agencies", which most likely refers to Lulzsec, the group that has been behind attacks on Sony, the International Monetary Fund, the US Senate, the FBI, the CIA and most recently the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).

The arrested man's computers and related equipment have been seized and are being forensically examined.

Rumours are growing that the man in question is Ryan Cleary, who comes from the same location as the arrested individual. Cleary was previously a member of the hacktivist group Anonymous, but he incurred the wrath of the group after hacking its websites and servers and making off with a number of passwords.

Anonymous launched a revenge attack by publishing his private details online. At first glance it appeared that this might not have been Cleary, since the details stated he was 17. However, further down it said he was 16 as of July 2008, which means it's likely that he is 19 now.

According to one Twitter user, Cleary has little to do with Lulzsec beyond running its IRC channel, a role he previously filled for Anonymous. The Twitter user revealed that there are six members of Lulzsec and that they are all still "fine and safe". That is, of course, providing that Cleary does not have any incriminating information about them.

It is widely believed that Cleary might have been turned in by his former friends in Anonymous, though it might simply be a case that the police used his published information to track him down after the Lulzsec attacks became more frequent and began to target intelligence groups like the FBI and CIA.

Lulzsec tweeted about the arrest, saying, "Seems the glorious leader of LulzSec got arrested, it's all over now... wait... we're all still here! Which poor bastard did they take down?"

A post on Pastebin claiming to be from Lulzsec suggested it obtained the UK's 2011 census, which gives detailed information about every citizen in the country. It promised to release this on its website and through The Pirate Bay. Some reports suggest it has already leaked, but we have been unable to validate that this has happened.

However, Lulzsec denies that it ever made this claim, saying it was "not sure ... where that rumour started". This means it was either a prank, organised by another group using Lulzsec's name, or today's arrest has spooked Lulzsec into reconsidering publishing the UK census information.

Given past behaviour of Lulzsec, we think the arrest is unlikely to have any effect on its plans. In fact, just like previous arrests of individuals connected with Anonymous, we can probably expect to see retaliatory attacks against the Met's web site and servers. µ