Amorphous Hacking Group Disbands, Reorganizes, Rages More On Twitter

The hacking group Lulzsec has announced its own end via Twitter, while infamous loosely organized anarchist collective Anonymous claims that "all Lulzsec members are accounted for, nobody is hiding. Only a name was abandoned for the greater glory."

Lulzsec recently went on a 50-day hacking spree that targeted game companies as often as not, spreading "freedom" and "justice" by targeting noted corporate pawns such as Mojang Specifications (Minecraft) and Riot Games (League of  Legends). The denial-of-service attacks on those companies were irritating for members of their respective communities, but Lulzsec's theft of user/password data from BioWare and Bethesda were more insidious.

Anonymous, the Scientology-protesting, Bradley Manning-defending Internet vigilante group that seems to vacillate between amusing nose-tweaking (Rickrolling Scientologists in real life, for one) and nefarious black-hat attacks on governments and corporations one or more of its members find offensive for some reason or another, is unsurprisingly sympathetic to Lulzsec's anarchist aims.

Referring to either Lulzsec or Anonymous as unified actors in traditional terms is a particularly stupid fallacy that much of the media falls into. Who is posting from the @AnonymousIRC Twitter account? How about @LulzSec? Where did the cyberattacks originate from, because it certainly wasn't from Twitter or 4chan where the groups issue public statements.

The ethical and legal implications of the actions of members of Lulzsec or Anonymous are worth debating, but it's hard to be sympathetic to whatever nebulous goals (as far as I can tell, "information security of any kind is bad and must be annihilated through any means necessary") when the end result is that I have to wait in a two-hour queue before losing another pubbie LoL match because of hilariously terrible teammates.

[via VentureBeat, VG247]