Grant Gross
Senior Writer

Report: LulzSec leader directed cyber attacks while working for FBI

news
Oct 1, 20142 mins

Hector Xavier Monsegur directed attacks against targets in the UK, Australia, Brazil, and other countries

The leader of the now-disbanded LulzSec hacking group directed members to attack targets in dozens of countries, including the United Kingdom, Turkey, Brazil, and Australia, even as he was serving as an FBI informant, according to a news report.

LulzSec leader Hector Xavier Monsegur, known as Sabu, directed hacktivist Jeremy Hammond to attack multiple targets, according to the report in The Daily Dot. Hammond was sentenced in November 2013 to 10 years in prison for attacks on geopolitical intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting.

Monsegur, meanwhile, was released in May after serving about seven months in prison. He had previously pleaded guilty to a 12-count indictment outlining various fraud and hacking charges. Prosecutors, in arguing for a short sentence, cited his “extraordinary” cooperation with investigators.

Monsegur directed cyber attacks against targets in 30 countries in early 2012, said The Daily Dot, citing a previously unreleased sentencing memo for Hammond.

In January 2012, Hammond penetrated two servers targeted by Monsegur, including one containing 3,520 domains, many of them in the Netherlands and Belgium, and another containing 392 Brazilian domains, according to the story.

Other targets of LulzSec, an offshoot of Anonymous, were in the Philippines, Sudan, India, Saudi Arabia, and Argentina, according to the story.

Monsegur’s lawyer and an FBI representative weren’t immediately available for comment.

Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for The IDG News Service. Follow Grant on Twitter at GrantGross. Grant’s email address is grant_gross@idg.com.

Grant Gross

Grant Gross, a senior writer at CIO, is a long-time IT journalist who has focused on AI, enterprise technology, and tech policy. He previously served as Washington, D.C., correspondent and later senior editor at IDG News Service. Earlier in his career, he was managing editor at Linux.com and news editor at tech careers site Techies.com. As a tech policy expert, he has appeared on C-SPAN and the giant NTN24 Spanish-language cable news network. In the distant past, he worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Minnesota and the Dakotas. A finalist for Best Range of Work by a Single Author for both the Eddie Awards and the Neal Awards, Grant was recently recognized with an ASBPE Regional Silver award for his article “Agentic AI: Decisive, operational AI arrives in business.”

More from this author