Photo: AP
The four men charged with taking part in cyber attacks under hacking group LulzSec, an offshoot of Anonymous, appeared in court Friday afternoon, appearing side-by-side for first time before a judge. British prosecutors allege that the quartet last engaged with one another under the guises of online pseudonyms to wreak havoc on the web.
The four men, Ryan Ackroyd, 25, Ryan Cleary, 20, Jake Davis, 19 and a 17-year-old male who could not be named, were originally due to offer pleas in connection to an eight-count indictment; the pleas however were delayed until June 25. Prosecutor Hugh Davies cited the complexities of the case and added that one of the defendants was about to sit his exams. When Judge Alistair McCreath made a quip about studying computer science, the young defendant, sitting in the dock between Jake Davis and Cleary, offered a small smile. Ackroyd sat behind them, his arms folded.
At least two of the LulzSec Four will be concerned about the possibility of extradition to the United States, where punishments against computer-hacking crimes are generally harsher than in the U.K.
Jake Davis, accused of acts committed under the pseudonym “Topiary,” and Ryan Ackroyd, accused of acting under the name “Kayla” online, were recently named in a U.S. indictment. In the court room today, Davis wore a suit and tie paired with black trainers decorated with colourful Tetris blocks, while Ackroyd was in a beige sweater and jeans, sporting a military-style crew cut. Both men hail from northern England, though Davis was living in the Shetland Islands when he was arrested last summer.
The U.S. charges against the two men included hacking the Fox Broadcasting Company, SonyPictures Entertainment and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Each count carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
The American indictment was unsealed on March 6, the same day as revelations that LulzSec’s charismatic leader, a hacker known as Sabu, was in fact an unemployed 28-year-old man named Hector Monsegur who had been working with the FBI for the last eight months as an informant. U.S. prosecutors said he had helped to drum up charges against his younger cohorts.
Four of the eight counts listed in the updated British indictment today, were levelled solely on 20-year-old Cleary. He is accused of supplying a botnet — or a network of thousands of infected computers that can be used to paralyze websites — to others, and operating one himself to attack the website of DreamHost, a web hosting company. He is also accused of “installing and/or altering computer programs” on computers at the Pentagon controlled by the U.S. Air Force, between May 1 and June 22, 2011.
Cleary was the only one of the four defendants who was still in police custody. He was arrested on March 6 of this year — the same day Hector “Sabu” Monsegur was unveiled as an informant — for breaching his bail conditions.
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