We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency

by Parmy Olson

  That morning, London’s Metropolitan Police announced that an eighteen-year-old had been arrested and charged with launching DDoS attacks on several organizations. Within hours, Britain’s tabloid newspapers had picked up the news, followed by major media outlets in the United States. Though the police hadn’t mentioned LulzSec in their release, several newspapers reported, strangely, that the “mastermind” of LulzSec had been arrested.

  When Topiary signed in to the LulzSec private chat rooms the next morning, there was the same kind of frightened chatter that had accompanied Sabu’s disappearance. Topiary slowly realized what was going on. Still, Tflow and Sabu said they were relieved. They had heard about the arrest on the news and each said they thought it was Topiary.

  “Ryan is now fucked beyond all belief,” Topiary said. He felt numb. Eventually Ryan’s name was released and a newspaper got hold of his family. They interviewed his mother, who talked about how she had to leave plates of food outside his door because he would never leave his bedroom and how he had once almost killed himself when she tried to take his computer away. It printed a photo of Ryan as a doe-eyed schoolboy, along with a picture of his room. The photo had captions and arrows pointing out everything from the foil covering his windows to the spoof-motivational poster on his wall of two semi-naked women and the title “Teamwork.” Topiary recognized it all from their video chats. The newspapers didn’t seem to know the half of Ryan’s eccentricities. The windowsill was where Ryan had grown weed a year before. His desk was now clear of litter and potato chips and had probably been cleaned by his mother. Just a week earlier Ryan had grabbed a hypodermic needle and started stabbing his toe in front of the webcam. On top of all that, the idea of arrest now felt much closer to home.

  Sabu and Topiary spoke on the phone. They agreed to change their e-mail addresses and their public nicknames and everything Ryan knew about because Ryan would snitch. They talked about finding new servers to host their IRC networks and the LulzSecurity website. And for the public face, Topiary played it cool. “Seems the glorious leader of LulzSec got arrested,” he said on Twitter. “It’s all over now…wait…we’re all still here! Which poor bastard did they take down?”

  There was one other errand to take care of: M_nerva. They had always known that the hacker who had leaked the #pure-elite chat logs had worked with Ryan on some of his moneymaking schemes. With Ryan out of the picture, there was no need to hold back from M_nerva anymore. It was safe to finally take revenge. Topiary published an official statement on Marshall “M_nerva” Webb, addressing it to the FBI as a helpful offer of new information. “Snitches get stiches,” he had written, unaware that his closest confidant, Sabu, was a far more dangerous snitch. The public was keen to see who had been the snitch, and the page got more than a thousand views in twenty seconds. It took a few weeks for the FBI to follow up on the M_nerva information, but in late June, federal authorities would raid Webb’s home in Ohio.

  In the meantime, there were now more than three hundred thousand people following LulzSec on Twitter, more than 135 eager people in LulzSec Brazil, hacker groups in Spain and Iran wanting to join forces, constant offers of database dumps, control of a few dozen government sites, and more than a gigabyte of data to release. It included twelve thousand passwords from a NATO website, hundreds of random internal police documents, government documents, a video of the police accidentally dropping a dead body from a plane, photos of human flesh scattered across pavements; “/b/ would love this stuff,” Topiary thought. He tried not to think about the fact that doing more would pile on a greater jail sentence. He convinced himself that LulzSec had become like WikiLeaks—it was just leaking information that other people had handed over.

  The FBI, in the meantime, was racing to keep up with their new informant, who was plugged into this fast-moving world. As hackers offered vulnerabilities to Sabu in secret IRC meetings, he passed them on to his new overseers so that those security holes could be fixed. Sabu was deftly pulling the strings of LulzSec, putting on the face of genuine complicity while secretly helping the authorities prevent many of those potential attacks from happening. With things moving so quickly, Topiary, Kayla, Tflow, and the others had no time to track how many of them led to dead ends, thanks to Sabu. They were always on the lookout for the next big hit.

  “We are challenging ourselves to progress to bigger things,” Topiary said at the time. “Funny, bigger targets.” There was no turning back now.

  Among the stream of offers Topiary and Sabu got for exploits and data, one stood out. It had been evening in Topiary’s part of the world when a hacker who had been talking to Sabu and had then been unable to get through contacted Topiary to say he had access to hundreds of secret files and user info after hacking into the Arizona police department network. He was an activist, passionately against the racial profiling that took place in the state, and he wanted to release the data as retribution. Topiary recognized the name, since Sabu had mentioned it before. After the hacker had uploaded the data to a secret server, Tflow, Pwnsauce, and Topiary all grabbed it to see what was inside. It was a folder containing more than seven hundred documents. There were embarrassing e-mails complaining about a scared officer who had run and hidden in a ditch during a recent shootout, innocuous details about a new safe-driving campaign, and home addresses and contact details for Arizona police officers. Given enough digging, the hacker hoped his cache of documents could shed light on corrupt practices in the department. The hacker made a convincing argument about systemic prejudice in the border police, and Topiary, employing his usual carefree outlook on things, figured that the hacker should write his own press release—the first time anyone but Topiary would write one for LulzSec. Tflow created a torrent file.

  There hadn’t been much time to check over the press release, and there was no editing. Once everything was ready, Topiary published it. The press release was titled “Chinga La Migra” and next to it were the words “Off the pigs”; beside that was the image of an AK-47 machine gun fashioned from keyboard symbols. Topiary did a double take. When he reread the press release, now public for everyone to see, he didn’t see LulzSec’s usual lighthearted dig at a large, faceless institution but an aggressive polemic against real police officers that revealed their home addresses. When he Googled Chinga La Migra, he learned it was a Spanish phrase for “fuck the police.” He immediately regretted posting the other hacker’s statement. It was almost encouraging people to attack cops. It turned out Tflow had also Googled Chinga La Migra and felt exactly the same way.

  He sent Topiary a message. It was too much. The statement had made him feel “radicalized.”

  “We don’t want to get police officers killed,” Topiary replied, agreeing. “That’s not my kind of style.” It wasn’t Tflow’s either.

  Topiary had just set up an interview via instant message text with the BBC television news program Newsnight that evening, June 24. It was one of his few media interviews while LulzSec was still active. Putting on his acting hat, he made grand statements about anti-security and the corruption his group was fighting. “People fear the ‘higher-ups,’” he told BBC producer Adam Livingstone, “and we’re here to bring them down a few notches.” But the words stuck in his throat.

  When he really thought about what LulzSec had turned into, he realized it had moved far from being a group that simultaneously entertained and fixed the world. It did neither of those things. It was chaos. Every day now the core group was spending more time dealing with internal issues, conspiring against trolls like Jester and Backtrace, rooting out snitches, or worrying about what Ryan might say to the police. It had been more than a week since the team had really gotten together and worked at something as an original leak. Just hours before Topiary’s interview with BBC Television, the Guardian newspaper had gotten hold of the #pure-elite logs leaked weeks before by M_nerva and published a story saying that LulzSec was “a disorganized group obsessed with media coverage and suspicious of other hackers.” The glow surroundin
g LulzSec seemed to be fading.

  “This is annoying now,” Topiary exclaimed in an interview. “Two months ago we were a small team working on operations with no outside hassle. Now there’s other people coming and going, ‘enemy’ groups, press saying stupid things, people trying to toss around politics, people starting drama all the time. Kind of out of control.” Even the Wikipedia page on LulzSec was cluttered with rumors.

  The distractions from enemy hackers, trolls, the press, and misunderstandings across the blogosphere had become overwhelming. Recently someone had copied and pasted the LulzSec logo on a Pastebin post and claimed (posing as LulzSec) that they had hacked the entire U.K. census database of more than seventy million people. The national press breathlessly reported it as another legitimate LulzSec threat. LulzSec was becoming like Anonymous: anyone could lay claim to the name and be taken seriously.

  “People are pretending to be us everywhere,” Topiary said. Ignoring the trolls wasn’t enough because when Topiary signed in to the private LulzSec chat rooms with his crew, he could see that people in the room had spent the past hour talking about snitches and enemies. It was often impossible to look away, and when Topiary stayed quiet in those conversations, Sabu would ask him why he wasn’t saying anything, and the conversation would become awkward.

  Topiary finally made up his mind. On the evening of Friday, June 24, four days after Ryan’s arrest, he decided to tell the others in LulzSec that he wanted out. It would be hard because, as the mouthpiece of LulzSec, Topiary leaving meant the team itself would probably have to call it a day. As he entered the LulzSec private chat channel, Tflow beat him to the punch. “Guys. Topiary, AVunit, you here?” Tflow asked.

  “Yeah,” Topiary replied.

  “Well, I need to leave LulzSec / Anon / etc. for some time. I need to hand over any site-related stuff to you guys, including domains.”

  Topiary felt a sudden rush of relief. The very idea of leaving LulzSec seemed to make all the other distractions and anxieties melt away. It was possible there was an end to this. He wanted Tflow to lay out why he was leaving so the group could have a discussion about it. Maybe others would say they wanted to stop too.

  “Any reason for your departure?” he asked.

  “I’ll be honest,” Tflow replied. “The ‘off the pigs’ remark in the last release, which I did not know the meaning of before, is making me feel radicalized and depressed, so I need a break. Feds probably are going to leave no stone unturned now, so I’m going to wipe my hard drive and start fresh.”

  Another glimmer of optimism. It would be hard to let go of the name and the action, but there was something appealing about starting over. He threw in his agreement.

  “I was thinking kind of the same,” Topiary said. “Like you said, heat is insane…I mean, a friend that has nothing to do with us saw Ryan on the front page of a shitty local newspaper. I know I don’t want to be on the front page of a shitty local newspaper. And neither do you guys.” Besides, he added, “All our leaks come from other people.”

  “So do you think we should all just quietly split up for a while or what?” asked Tflow.

  “I think it would be classy to sail off into the distance and never be caught,” Topiary mused. “In 10 years we will be the greatest hacking group in the entire world. Ever.” It was tongue in cheek, but the thought of leaving on a high note, like rock stars disbanding while they were still on the charts, suddenly made ending LulzSec seem like a good idea. Obvious, even.

  Topiary and Tflow started discussing their final, explosive release of some of the pile of data they had been sitting on for weeks. An American hacker had given Tflow a cache of stolen business documents from AT&T’s servers. There were login details for a NATO bookshop, as well as other .gov and .mil logins. Tflow had thought the AT&T documents were valuable enough to save for a separate release, but Chinga La Migra had opened his eyes to how futile things really were.

  “I don’t give a shit anymore,” he said. “Release everything.” Then Tflow checked his calendar and saw this all made even more sense. “On Monday it will be exactly 50 days that have passed,” he added. They could call the final release Fifty Days of Lulz. It might almost look like this had been planned from the start.

  Sabu appeared online. “Yo yo,” he said.

  Topiary felt a twinge of anticipation but continued discussing practicalities with Tflow as Sabu read over their conversation. “Wow,” Sabu finally said. “I understand your point of views, but there’s no turning back. We’ve passed the point of no return.”

  Topiary was getting tired of Sabu’s point-of-no-return line and wanted to remind him that he and LulzSec weren’t as powerful as Sabu thought.

  “Sabu, when was the last time we, as LulzSec, leaked anything that was ours?” Topiary asked. He listed leaks for Fox, Sony, NATO, Senate.gov—all targets of cyber attacks handed over on a plate by other hackers. Only Infragard and PBS had truly been carried out by LulzSec hackers. In the end, LulzSec had become just like Anonymous, a brand that other cyber punks could exploit for their own purposes, whether it was to make themselves look more important or to cower under. While that had brought them fame and respect, it was vastly increasing their culpability to the police.

  “You guys can go,” Sabu finally said. “I’m fucked sooner or later, so I got no choice but to continue.” Despite the heat, it had never truly felt like Topiary and Tflow were trapped in LulzSec. Then, when Sabu changed tack and began telling them to stay, adding that they were abandoning him, it suddenly was like trying to crawl out of a spinning barrel. Soon AVunit and Pwnsauce had entered the chat room and added their agreement that it was time for a break. Even Kayla showed up and said that while she didn’t mind—“I just let it flow” were her words—she saw the reasoning in wanting to stop.

  Topiary sighed to himself. “You know I’m all for this nihilistic ‘we have to go on’ theory,” he said, “but I like my life, bros. I don’t want to be arrested.” Encouraged by Tflow, he started talking about how the Antisec movement would carry on without them anyway; they’d sail off in the distance, leaving behind a trail of mayhem and the revival of a movement against white hats, governments, and corporations. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t pacify Sabu, who seemed to be laying on the guilt as thick as IRC allowed: “That’s alright, you guys leave. I’ll be the only faggot left,” he said.

  It looked as though Sabu had gone through several stages of intention with LulzSec, initially excited at the prospect of creating the group, then even more enthusiastic as he took on support from other older hackers and Julian Assange himself. Topiary started to think Sabu was almost acting suicidal. More likely: Hector Monsegur had nothing more to lose, and the FBI needed more evidence on the LulzSec hackers.

  “Sabu, we’re leaving behind the LulzSec public face with a classy ending,” he tried. “The movement you strive for is continuing.” It was no use. After a few minutes, Sabu started talking to each of the hackers individually. He was enraged.

  Soon enough Topiary saw flashing text on his screen that indicated Sabu wanted to have a private conversation. Reluctantly he opened it, and Sabu started venting. Topiary kept saying that ending LulzSec had turned out to be a majority decision. It wasn’t just him—the whole team wanted a break. But Sabu saw a team that had been turned against him by Topiary’s manipulation. When the heat increased, Topiary told Sabu to get off the computer and get a drink of water so he could calm down.

  “Don’t fucking talk down to me like you’re elite,” Sabu shot back. “I treat you with nothing but respect, but I destroy kids like you instantly. Don’t forget this point. So treat me with respect.”

  “Sabu what are you thinking?” Topiary said. “You’ve got kids and need to stop this. At least change your nick from Sabu.”

  “It’s too late anyway,” Sabu said, simmering.

  “What do you mean? You can’t say it’s too late. You don’t want your kids to grow up with their dad in jail. Change your nick, wipe a
ll your stuff and come back under a different name. If I had kids I wouldn’t be doing this.” Sabu replied again that it was too late. The team was abandoning him.

  “We’re not abandoning you,” Topiary countered. “We’re just stopping LulzSec. We’re still here as friends.” Instead of mollifying Sabu, this made him more angry. Topiary gave up trying to reason with him. It was impossible to explain why things happened in LulzSec or in Anonymous other than to say that so much had been done on a whim: creating the group itself, picking the targets, suddenly reviving the Antisec movement. LulzSec had never planned its activities more than twelve hours in advance. The media and the authorities were giving LulzSec too much credit and not seeing it for what it really was: a group of people with all the right talents that had come together at the right time and had then lost control of what they had created. Now even Topiary was starting to get bored with it all.

  Sabu began hinting that he saw less whim, and more conspiracy. He opened up private discussions with AVunit and Tflow, who later passed on details of these conversations to Topiary. Sabu talked with each of them about how Topiary had been using him and Kayla to hack into websites like PBS. He argued that when his grandmother had died and he had to go on a break, Topiary had effectively tried to wrest LulzSec from his control, then take off with the Bitcoin donations. Sabu’s brain of reason was now his fall guy. It was almost as if he were trying to get the other team members to implicate Topiary as much as possible before they split for good.