Two members of the computer hacking group LulzSec on Tuesday pleaded guilty to a string of charges of breaking into several high-profile websites in Britain and America.
Ryan Cleary (19) and Jake Davis (18) admitted in court ahead of a trial next year that as part of LulzSec (an offshoot of the Anonymous hacking collective), they were involved in attacks on sites belonging to Britain’s Serious Organised Crime Agency, the National Health Service, Rupert Murdoch’s media group News International, Sony, 20th Century Fox and Arizona State police among others.
Mr. Cleary also pleaded guilty to four separate charges, including those of hacking into US Air Force Agency computers at the Pentagon.
But both denied posting “unlawfully obtained confidential computer data” to public websites including LulzSec.com, Pirate Bay, and PasteBin.
In a separate case, American authorities have accused Mr. Cleary of hacking a number of websites in order to deface them and steal personal details.
LulzSec, a play on the word “lulz” or “lol” (laugh out loud), employed a technique called distributed denial of service (DDoS) to flood websites with high traffic in order to render them unusable.
It has previously admitted defacing the website of The Sun newspaper with a false story suggesting that its owner Mr. Murdoch had died. It also posted a false report on American broadcaster PBS’ website claiming that deceased rapper Tupac Shakur was still alive.
