EXCLUSIVE: For the last eight months, the self-styled “hacktivists” who make up LulzSec and the international hacker community beyond have been led by a turncoat.

Like a Mafia don who wears a wire to ensnare his own soldiers, Hector Xavier Monsegur, aka “Sabu,” has been helping the FBI track down and gather evidence against his associates, tweeting out misinformation and even protecting the CIA among other government and financial institutions from hacks, according to sources close to the LulzSec leader and law enforcement officials in charge of the months-long international hacking probe capped by international arrests of the remaining LulzSec leaders on Tuesday morning.

Flipping Monsegur wasn’t easy. But with a charge of aggravated identity theft and a two-year prison sentence to hang over his head, the FBI forced Monsegur to weigh the political beliefs that drove him and his allegiance to cohorts around the world against his desire to be with his kids—he is the guardian of two children—and his extended family.

“He didn’t go easy,” a law enforcement official involved in flipping Sabu told FoxNews.com. “It was because of his kids. He didn’t want to go away to prison and leave them. That’s how we got him.”

“He really cares about these kids,” a source said. “They’re young [and] he is really worried about what will happen.”

On Aug. 15, 2011, Monsegur pleaded guilty to more than ten charges relating to his hacking activity. In the following few weeks, he worked almost daily out of FBI offices, helping the feds identify and ultimately take down the other high-level members of LulzSec and Anonymous, sources said. In time, his handlers allowed him to work from the home from which he previously wrought destruction, using a PC laptop provided by the FBI. His old battered laptop with its missing left Shift, L and 7 keys was turned over to the FBI, along with the encryption keys government sleuths needed to access his records and take them into evidence.

The white pit bull Monsegur bought shortly after his arrest sits at his feet, barking at all strangers who step off the elevator.

Monsegur maintained the same habits and online presence he did prior to his arrest as the young hackers he commanded sat alone in their rooms around the world, searching for vulnerabilities on websites and servers. Their leads were sent to Sabu, like offerings made to a monarch.

“In half the world he was a god,” one law enforcement official explained. “If he thought what you did was good, you’d rise up in the [hacker] community—once he blessed you, basically.”

Sabu was online between 8 and 16 hours a day, often sleeping during the day and working throughout the night, watching YouTube videos as he worked for the FBI. Monitoring software on his government-issued laptop allowed the feds to see what he did in real time. The FBI has had an agent watching his online activity 24 hours a day, officials said.

When Sabu told his handlers of a vulnerability his minions detected in a company or government server, the feds reached out to the targets and tried to prevent damage. Sometimes, it was too late.

Sabu and his FBI handlers also disseminated false information to the public and hacker community—often through Twitter, sometimes through unsuspecting reporters who thought they’d landed an online interview with the notorious hacker. Their correspondence was sometimes directly with agents. More often it was with Sabu acting on strict guidance from the agents sitting with him, reading his every word.

“About 90 percent of what you see online is bulls---,” said one of Monsegur’s handlers, referring to the Twitter posts from Sabu’s account and “interviews” he’s given to the press on direction from the FBI as part of their disinformation campaign.

With Sabu’s help, the FBI learned the identities of other LulzSec members, gathered evidence and records from private chatrooms used by the elite hackers to plan and discuss their cyber attacks, and found out about planned hacks in time to minimize or prevent damage without blowing their star witness’ cover.

In August, 2011, it became known that LulzSec affiliate Anonymous had hacked into 70 law enforcement websites, mostly local sheriffs’ websites in Missouri run by the same hosting company. The hacks had actually occurred four weeks prior. Using information passed on by Monsegur, the FBI was able to work with the server company to mitigate the damage.

With Sabu’s help, the FBI alerted 300 government, financial and corporate entities in the U.S. and around the globe to potential vulnerabilities in their computer systems, allowing the companies to protect themselves, an FBI supervisory official told FoxNews.com.

Sabu’s work as a cooperating witness also included fact-checking allegations from his peers. When members of LulzSec and Anonymous announced publicly that they’d hacked a company to steal information, Sabu would verify or discredit the claims. Most of the time, the hackers just got into computer systems and databases and looked around without taking anything—but even the rumor of a breach can cause a company to spend large amounts of money or spook stockholders.

When the CIA found itself under siege from LulzSec hackers, Sabu stepped in. With his underlings launching so-called DDoS attacks -- denial of service cyberattacks that basically flood a website with traffic to overwhelm it -- the CIA’s public website was threatened.

“We told Sabu to tell them to stop,” an official said. “‘It’s embarrassing for the CIA,’ we told Sabu, ‘Make them stop, now.’”

Sabu sent out the order: “You’re knocking over a bee’s nest,” he warned his associates. “Stop.”

They did.

The example showed the power of the alienated young father who used his brilliant mind to wreak economic havoc around the world from the least likely computer command center until the feds unmasked him. Afforded cult-leader status by his fellow hackers, Monsegur evoked both respect and envy.

“He's a rockstar,” a New York-based hacker with close ties to WikiLeaks said recently. “All the girls, you buy them a drink, but all they want to talk about is Sabu, Sabu, Sabu.

“And what really sucks is he really is that good.”

Today, the hackers who worshipped Sabu are in for a rude awakening.

“When people in the hacking community realize their God has actually been cooperation with the government, it’ll be sheer terror,” said one senior official.

Another source was even more blunt: “You might be a messiah in the hacking community but you’re still a rat,” he said.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/06/exclusive-
inside-lulzsec-mastermind-turns-on-his-minions/#ixzz1oMvGGd00

They should ALL be facing atleast 20 years. They should be charged under Domesic Terrorism charges.

EXCLUSIVE: Law enforcement agents on two continents swooped in on top members of the infamous computer hacking group LulzSec early this morning, and acting largely on evidence gathered by the organization’s brazen leader -- who sources say has been secretly working for the government for months -- arrested three and charged two more with conspiracy.

Charges against four of the five were based on a conspiracy case filed in New York federal court, FoxNews.com has learned. An indictment charging the suspects, who include two men from Great Britain, two from Ireland and an American in Chicago, is expected to be unsealed Tuesday morning in the Southern District of New York.

“This is devastating to the organization,” said an FBI official involved with the investigation. “We’re chopping off the head of LulzSec.”

The offshoot of the loose network of hackers, Anonymous, believed to have caused billions of dollars in damage to governments, international banks and corporations, was allegedly led by a shadowy figure FoxNews.com has identified as Hector Xavier Monsegur. Working under the Internet alias “Sabu,” the unemployed, 28-year-old father of two allegedly commanded a loosely organized, international team of perhaps thousands of hackers from his nerve center in a public housing project on New York’s Lower East Side. After the FBI unmasked Monsegur last June, he became a cooperating witness, sources told FoxNews.com.

“They caught him and he was secretly arrested and now works for the FBI,” a source close to Sabu told FoxNews.com.

Monsegur pleaded guilty Aug. 15 to 12 hacking-related charges and information documenting his admissions was unsealed in Southern District Court on Tuesday.

As a result of Monsegur’s cooperation, which was confirmed by numerous senior-level officials, the remaining top-ranking members of LulzSec were arrested or hit with additional charges Tuesday morning. The five charged in the LulzSec conspiracy indictment expected to be unsealed were identified by sources as: Ryan Ackroyd, aka “Kayla” and Jake Davis, aka “Topiary,” both of London; Darren Martyn, aka “pwnsauce” and Donncha O’Cearrbhail, aka “palladium,” both of Ireland; and Jeremy Hammond aka “Anarchaos,” of Chicago.

Hammond was arrested on access device fraud and hacking charges and is believed to have been the main person behind the devastating December hack on Stratfor, a private company that provides geopolitical analysis to governments and others. Millions of emails were stolen and then published on Wikileaks; credit card numbers and other confidential information were also stolen, law enforcement sources told FoxNews.com.

The sources said Hammond will be charged in a separate indictment, and they described him as a member of Anonymous.

The others are all suspected members of LulzSec, the group that has wreaked havoc on U.S. and foreign government agencies, including the CIA and FBI, numerous defense contractors, financial and governmental entities and corporations including Fox and Sony.

Ackroyd, who is suspected of using the online handle “Kayla,” is alleged to be Monsegur’s top deputy. Among other things, Kayla identified vulnerabilities in the U.S. Senate’s computer systems and passed the information on to Sabu. Kayla was expected to be taken into custody on Tuesday.

A spokeswoman for the Southern District and U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara declined comment.

Monsegur’s attorney did not return FoxNews.com’s repeated requests for comment.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/06/hacking-group-lulzsec-swept-up-by-law-enforcement/#ixzz1oMw6d5oB

EXCLUSIVE: It was one of the hottest days of the year and evening temperatures were still sweltering when two FBI agents wearing bulletproof vests under their dark suits climbed the stairs of the Jacob Riis housing complex in New York’s Lower East Side on June 7, 2011. Drenched in sweat, they knocked on the steel door of a sixth-floor unit. It swung open to reveal a man in his late twenties wearing jeans and a white T-shirt.

“I’m Hector,” he said.

The agents were suddenly face-to-face with “Sabu,” the computer genius they had stalked for months, a quarry so elusive they hadn’t pinned down his identity and location until just weeks before. The suspected ringleader of the Anonymous offshoot group LulzSec, Hector Xavier Monsegur and his web minions had just completed a month-long reign of terror, hacking the CIA, Fox, Sony and several financial institutions, causing, according to some estimates, billions of dollars in damage around the world.

The nondescript public housing unit seemed an unlikely nerve center for one of the world’s most wanted criminal masterminds, but the 28-year-old Monsegur himself is a study in such contradictions. An unemployed computer programmer, welfare recipient and legal guardian of two young children, Monsegur did not go to college and is a self-taught hacker. Although his skills and intellect could command a lucrative salary in the private sector, those who know him say he is lazy, an underachiever complacent with his lifestyle.

“He’s extremely intelligent,” a law enforcement official said. “Brilliant, but lazy.”

It was the laziness that got him.

Sabu had always been cautious, hiding his Internet protocol address through proxy servers. But then just once he slipped. He logged into an Internet relay chatroom from his own IP address without masking it. All it took was once. The feds had a fix on him.

For weeks they waited, watching him, monitoring the online activity of the man they believed was the leader of LulzSec.

But then, late in the evening of June 7, they received word that Sabu had been "doxed" -- meaning that for a very brief moment, someone had posted Sabu’s real name and address online. Law enforcement feared Sabu would see he’d been outed and begin destroying evidence of his hacking career—and all traces of those he’d worked and communicated with online. They had to move.

Agents had already subpoenaed Sabu’s Facebook account, finding stolen credit card numbers he was selling to other hackers. They had enough to charge him with aggravated identity theft, which carries a two-year minimum sentence. But as the brains behind LulzSec, the man staring across the doorway at them on that summer night last year was much more valuable as a cooperating witness.

“It’s not me, you got the wrong guy,” Monsegur said, according to sources who witnessed the interaction. “I don’t have a computer.”

Behind Monsegur, the agents saw the Ethernet cable snaking to his DSL modem, green lights blinking on and off.

The agents worked their prey, using the time-honored good cop/bad cop routine. Bad cop stormed out of Monsegur’s apartment yelling, “That’s it, no deal, it’s over, we’re locking you up.”

The computer genius finally gave in, surrendering to the most clichéd tool in the law enforcement arsenal. But the agents had more than just skills – they had leverage.

“It was because of his kids,” one of the two agents recalled. “He’d do anything for his kids. He didn’t want to go away to prison and leave them. That’s how we got him.”

Monsegur was quietly arrested on aggravated identity theft charges and released on bail. On Aug. 15 he pleaded guilty to a dozen counts of hacking-related charges and agreed to cooperate with the FBI. Monsegur went right on living in the unit he shared with the children, supporting them, five brothers and a sister and living off public assistance, according to those who know him.

But from now on, he worked for the government he had once tried to attack at every turn.

Monsegur, according to his handlers, took his Internet name from a Staten Island-born pro-wrestler who billed himself as a Saudi Arabian to incite jingoistic arena crowds. Sabu the Elephant Boy wrestled on the independent pro circuits in the 1980s and 1990s, developing a reputation as a heel who shed as much blood as he drew.

It was his anti-government, anti-capitalist ideologies that caused Monsegur to gravitate toward hacking, according to those who witnessed his ascent. His rare blend of interpersonal skills, technical ability and street cred, combined with the hacks he did, ensured his rapid ascent in the hacker community. Driven by politics, Monsegur once released personal information about Arizona law enforcement in response to the state’s immigration law.

Anonymous and LulzSec members call themselves “hacktivists,” hackers with an agenda, a theme that runs through Monsegur's career. For several years he worked at LimeWire, one of a group of software companies that created peer-to-peer sharing programs to help users "liberate" their music.

Such file-sharing software obviously facilitated copyright infringements -- and new networks to share music files after Napster was shut down. LimeWire was eventually closed, slammed by the recording industry group RIAA with a $105 million lawsuit. Monsegur lost his job when the company was shuttered. With the exception of a stint as a repo-man, he’s been unemployed ever since.

Given his prodigious skills, he needn’t have been, according to his handlers.

“Sabu could be making millions of bucks heading the IT security department of a major company,” a law enforcement official said. “But look at him, he’s impoverished, living off public assistance and was forced between turning on his friends and spending a lifetime in jail.

“It’s sad, really.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/06/exclusive-unmasking-worlds-most-wanted-hacker/#ixzz1oMwQqart

This is why I hate Government Assistance. This guy could have provided for himself and his family but he wanted his govenment check for doing nothing.