Hacker breaks code of honour

He informed on Anonymous pals, leading to charges in U.S., U.K.

NEW YORK— The shadowy underworld of Internet hackers was rocked by news Tuesday that one of the world’s most wanted vandals became an FBI informant and helped authorities build a case against five alleged comrades.

The FBI said it captured the legendary hacker known as “Sabu” last June, and he turned out to be Hector Xavier Monsegur, 28, a selftaught, unemployed computer programmer with no college education, living on welfare in New York.

His exploits made him a hero to some in cyberspace until he made a rookie mistake — he posted something online without cloaking his IP address, or computer identity — and someone tipped off the FBI.

He pleaded guilty and began spilling secrets, leading to charges Tuesday against four people in the U.K. and one in the U.S., and preventing more than 300 attacks along the way, authorities said.

The American suspect Jeremy Hammond, 27, was charged with crimes related to the hacking in December of Strategic Forecasting Inc. (Stratfor), a Texas-based global intelligence firm, that affected up to 860,000 victims.

Law enforcement officials said it was the first time core members of the loosely organized worldwide hacking group Anonymous have been identified and charged in the U.S.

Investigators said Monsegur and the other defendants were all associated with the group, and some were also part of the elite spinoff group Monsegur formed last May, Lulz Security or Lulzsec.

Monsegur and the other defendants were accused in court papers of hacking into corporations and government agencies around the world, including the U.S. Senate, filching confidential information, defacing websites and temporarily putting victims out of business.

Authorities said their crimes affected more than one million people.