A suspected ally of the LulzSec hacker group arrested in Britain faces charges that he took part in cyberattacks on companies in the US, court documents show.
Ryan Cleary was indicted by US prosecutors for conspiring to hack into computer systems to steal data and to overwhelm Web sites with simultaneous requests in what are known as distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
An indictment naming the 20-year-old British man as “an associate of the hacking group LulzSec, an offshoot of the larger group Anonymous” was filed on Tuesday, according to the US attorney’s office and FBI officials in California.
Photo: Reuters
Cleary identified weaknesses in targeted computer networks for LulzSec colleagues, who were allowed to wage attacks using an army of virus-infected computers at his command, said US Attorney Andre Birott and Steven Martinez, assistant director-in-charge at the FBI field office in Los Angeles.
“Cleary assisted LulzSec in its hacking activities by identifying and exploiting security vulnerabilities on victim computers, conducting DDoS attacks, and providing access to servers and other computer resources for LulzSec members to use,” Birott and Martinez said in a joint statement.
The indictment said Cleary worked with LulzSec members to attack computer systems at a news organization and several businesses during a three-month period early last year.
Cleary controlled a “botnet” of tens of thousands of computers infected with malicious software that let him seize command of the machines and turn them against targets by overwhelming Web sites with requests, prosecutors said.
“He used his botnet to conduct DDoS attacks against various entities,” Birott and Martinez said.
“The indictment further alleges that Cleary would rent out his botnet for certain time periods in exchange for money from individuals interested in conducting DDoS attacks targeting specific victims,” they said.
Cleary also used his resources to help LulzSec hackers communicate with one another or post stolen data online, prosecutors said.
The criminal charges against Cleary carry a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison.
Cleary was among a handful of people arrested in Britain over links to the “hacktivist” group. He remained in British custody “while facing foreign prosecution in England” related to his hacking activities, US prosecutors said.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
CONFIDENCE BOOSTER: ’After parkour ... you dare to do a lot of things that you think only young people can do,’ a 67-year-old parkour enthusiast said In a corner of suburban Singapore, Betty Boon vaults a guardrail, crawls underneath a slide, executes forward shoulder rolls and scales a steep slope, finishing the course to applause. “Good job,” the 69-year-old’s coach cheers. This is “geriatric parkour,” where about 20 retirees learned to tackle a series of relatively demanding exercises, building their agility and enjoying a sense of camaraderie. Boon, an upbeat grandmother, said learning parkour has aided her confidence and independence as she ages. “When you’re weak, you will be dependent on someone,” she said after sweating it out with her parkour classmates in suburban Toa Payoh,
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
RSS