In another sign that the FBI is picking up the fight against online hackers, agents arrested a 23-year-old Arizonian allegedly affiliated with “LulzSec” for hacking Sony and a homeless man in San Francisco allegedly affiliated with Anonymous for attacking government websites on Thursday.
Cody Andrew Kretsinger, who allegedly went by “recursion” online, was charged in federal court in the Central District of California for allegedly hacking user information from Sony’s Playstation games system along with other members of “Lulz Security” or “LulzSec.”
Separately, a homeless man living in San Francisco who allegedly was affiliated with Anonymous and launched cyberattacks on Santa Cruz County government websites was arrested on Thursday, TPM confirmed. Both arrests were first reported by FoxNews.com, which also said search warrants were being executed in New Jersey, Minnesota and Montana.
Feds described LulzSec as a “group of elite computer hackers affiliated with Anonymous” which “undertook cyber attacks on the computer systems of various business and government entities in the United States and throughout the world” in the indictment against Kretsinger.
Kretsinger, a resident of Tempe, Arizona, allegedly used the virtual private network HideMyAss.com that purportedly let users use the Internet anonymously. He first registered for a virtual private network on HideMyAss.com using the username “recursion” on May 23 and probed Sony’s computer system for vulnerabilities along with other hackers on May 27.
While a federal grand jury was convened in June, the indictment against him wasn’t unsealed until Thursday when Kretsinger was arrested this morning without incident.
