By David Howells
11/10/2011
Lulzsec has returned to the fore with claims that it is sitting on a cache of emails from The Sun newspaper.
"Hacktivist" group Lulzsec has, along with co-horts Anonymous, been somewhat quiet following the arrests of individuals thought to be prominent within the groups. Now, however, the leader - known only as "Sabu" - has come forward to say he is still on the run and sitting on a potentially explosive cache of emails, cybercrimesunit.com reports.
Lulzsec left behind a new landscape of internet security, making even the biggest of businesses realise they were not invincible and needed to invest in quality systems management software.
The Sun has come under much scrutiny of late following the allegations of hacking that saw its sister paper, The News of The World, closed down.
Hacking has been denied at The Sun, although many suspect that it may well have gone on, something that Lulzsec could now potentially be able to expose.
Lulzsec initially attacked The Sun during the height of the phone hacking scandal by redirecting its homepage to a website that reported the death of News International CEO Rupert Murdoch. At the time the group claimed to be in possession of four gigabytes worth of emails, a claim that has been repeated again by Sabu.
Whilst the emails are yet to be seen, News International has admitted that its site was the victim of a distributed denial of service attack, the same kind which also took down the FBI's website, among others.
However, even despite the leverage they could get from the bulk of emails, it appears that Lulzsec may be aware that their days are numbered. Acknowledging this, Sabu told guardian.co.uk that even if Lulzsec were to end, its achievements would be that it "exposed the sad state of security across the media, social [and] government online environments."
