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LulzSec hackers sentenced to prison time for role in 2011 cyber attacks

Sentences for the four LulzSec 'hacktivists' ranged from a 20-month suspended sentence to 32 months in prison. 

A British court has sentenced three members of the "hacktivist" group LulzSec to prison terms for their role in a series of 2011 cyber attacks. to the BBC, the three men – Ryan Cleary, Jake Davis, and Ryan Ackroyd – received sentences ranging from 24 to 32 months. A fourth man, Mustafa al-Bassam, was handed down a 20-month suspended sentence. 

"The harm they caused was foreseeable, extensive and intended," Andrew Hadik, a lawyer for the Crown Prosecution Service, in a statement this week. "Indeed, they boasted of how clever they were with a complete disregard for the impact their actions had on real people's lives. This case should serve as a warning to other cybercriminals that they are not invincible." 

Prosecutors that the hackers attacked the websites of the Britain’s National Health Service and the UK’s Serious Organized Crime Agency; in addition, the four men apparently posted scores of e-mail addresses and credit card numbers obtained from Pirate Bay. The sentencing closes the door on what was one of the cyber crime trials in recent years. 

Still, as Charles Arthur, the tech editor at the Guardian, notes today, a few questions remain, including the location of all the money donated by supporters. In addition, although LulzSec has claimed responsibility for a high-profile hack on Sony's PlayStation Network in the spring of 2011, Arthur has some doubts that the four men sentenced this week had much to do with it. 

"[H]acking the PSN was an act requiring very substantial skills that would have been more usual in a top-flight commercial hacker rather than a loose group who had only just come together," he . "If they could do that, one would have expected much more serious hacks." 

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