After hacking hacked Sony Corp., the U.S. Senate, an FBI affiliate, the Public Broadcasting System, gaming sites, and online porn sites, LulzSec dared authorities to catch them if they can. The hackers warned they will continue their hacks until "we're brought to justice, which we might well be."

Following a joint effort by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United Kingdom's Scotland Yard, Ryan Cleary, a 19-year-old suspected major player of LulzSec, was arrested in Essex, England. Cleary is in custody at a central London police station and is being questioned on a suspicion of a Computer Misuse Act and Fraud Act offence.

"The arrest follows an investigation into network intrusions and distributed denial of service attacks against a number of international business and intelligence agencies by what is believed to be the same hacking group," a spokesman on behalf of the Scotland Yard said.

"Searches at a residential address in Wickford, Essex, following the arrest last night have led to the examination of a significant amount of material."

Various sources say that Cleary is the mastermind of the group.LulzSec, however, tweeted, "Seems the glorious leader of LulzSec got arrested, it's all over now... wait... we're still here! Which poor bastard did they take down?"

About LulzSec

Tal Be'ery, lead web researcher at Imperva, a data security solutions provider, has put together a profile of LulzSec based on their own work, plus some information that is publicly available.
* Lulzsec seems to be a spinoff of a group of hackers from the "anonymous" organization.
* They hacked HBgary and gawker - under the anonymous group umbrella but then decided to create their own 'gig'. Why? Probably to be independent.
* The supporting evidence for is that the same nicks are used on both anonymous hacking related discussions (early 2011) and lulzsec (mid 2011).
* They communicate mainly via private IRC channels - and publish via twitter and pastebin.
* They mostly use Web application vulnerabilities as they used SQLi for PBS and (one of) Sony hacks.
* They also use automated tools to harvest databass called Havij, as we can see from the leaked PBS hack screenshots.

Tal Be'ery adds that main members of LulzSec are:
- Sabu - HBgary hacker. Seems to be the leader.
- Nakomis - Coder, rumored to be one of PHPBB coders.
- Topiary - Finance - handles donations and payment for services (e.g., botnets)
- Tflow - Hacker. Rumored.
- Kayla - Hacker. Owns a big botnet.
- Joepie91 - Website admin.
- Barrett Brown - Spokesperson

Imperva said that Mr. Brown called the firm to say he wasn't a part of Lulzsec. Further, he stated that he does't approve of Lulzsec's activities.

Criminals or Vigilantes?

LulzSec has gained support from Internet sectors as their attacks make victims aware that their sites are not secure, and, thus allow them to provide more firewalls before valuable information are obtained by other hackers. In one instance, it hacked into the British health system computers but declined to cause damage or publish details, and instead warned admins. that the system was insecure. LulzSec recently twitted after SEGA was hacked that it loved Dreamcast and it wants to help the gaming company to take the hackers down.

However, the group acknowledged that they are releasing private information in full (the passwords) to be entertained on how other people mis-use the accounts that they have released. Just recently, the group posted 62,000 "random" e-mail accounts and passwords from users of Yahoo!, AOL, Comcast, Hotmail, Verizon, and Gmail, among others, that the group has illegally obtained.

LulzSec said Monday it will join forces with hacker gorup Anonymous in a campaign against government networks.LulzSec outlined the campaign dubbed Operation Anti-Security in a letter posted on pastebin.org. LulzSec said they will unite in an effort to execute targeted attacks on governments, while inviting users to join the effort.