Computer hackers who considered themselves to be “modern day pirates” led sophisticated cyber attacks on websites and systems of major institutions including the CIA, Sony, the FBI and Nintendo, a court heard today.
Ryan Ackroyd, Jake Davis, Mustafa Al-Bassam and Ryan Cleary were “hactivists” with the LulzSec collective which also targeted organisations like News International, the NHS and the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca).
Working from their bedrooms in 2011, they stole huge amounts of sensitive personal data including emails, online passwords and credit card details belonging to hundreds of thousands of people, a sentencing hearing at Southwark Crown Court was told.
This was then posted openly on their website and file-sharing sites like Pirate Bay.
Prosecutor Sandip Patel said: “They saw themselves as latter-day pirates.”
Ex-soldier Ackroyd, 26, from Mexborough, South Yorkshire, pleaded guilty to one charge of carrying out an unauthorised act to impair the operation of a computer, contrary to the Criminal Law Act 1977.
He hacked major institutions, including stealing huge amounts of data from Sony, and a hack of News International websites that led people visiting the Sun’s site being redirected to a fake story about Rupert Murdoch committing suicide.
He used the online persona of a 16-year-old girl called Kayla.
Davis, 20, from Lerwick, Shetland, and Al-Bassam, 18, from Peckham, previously pleaded guilty to hacking and launching cyber attacks on a range of organisations, including the CIA and the Serious Organised Crime Agency.
Cleary, 21, of Wickford, Essex, pleaded guilty to the same two charges as well as four separate charges including hacking into US air force agency computers at the Pentagon.
