Today Jake Davis, allegedly known as Topiary, the purported spokesman and frontman of the Infamous LulzSec hacker group, was heard by Westminster Magistrates’ Court on five charges, including conspiracy for the DDoS attack against the Serious Organised Crime Agency’s website, forced offline on June 20.
He was arrested at Yell, one of the northern Shetland Isles, by British Police, on July, 27, and he is currently charged of the following offences:
- Unauthorised access to a computer system, contrary to Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990;
- Encouraging / assisting offences, contrary to S46 of the Serious Crime Act 2007;
- Conspiracy with others to carry out a Distributed Denial of Service Attack on the website of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency contrary to S1 Criminal Law Act 1977
- Conspiracy to commit offences of section 3 Computer Misuse Act 1990, contrary to S1 Criminal Law Act 1977
- Conspiracy between the defendant and others to commit offences of section 3 Computer Misuse Act 1990 contrary to S1 Criminal Law Act 1977.
During the day more and more details were disclosed about the 18 years old boy, already released on bail, the most sensational of which are represented by “his personal cache of 750.000 passwords” found in his laptop during the arrest, but also by the fact that prosecutors have claimed that Davis’s laptop was found to contain the fake article announcing Rupert Murdoch’s death; the same article was published on The Sun Home Page during the famous hack on July, the 18th related to the phone voicemail scandal that has overwhelmed News Corp, leading News Of The World to end its publications.
But I must confess I was intrigued by other two details: Jake is defined an avid online chess player, and most of all, The Daily Mail defines him “an Autistic Shetland Teen”, even if it does not report any medical information in support of its argument, but only general evidence.
Jake Davis is the third UK Teen arrested as an alleged member of LulzSec, in June same thing had happened to Ryan Cleary, a 19-year-old from Wickford Essex, while on July, the 19th, a 16-year-old boy from south London was arrested and subsequently released on police bail pending further inquiries. He was believed to be Tflow, another member of the Lulz Boat.
Curiously Ryan Cleary, he also charged for the SOCA DDoS, was also found to suffer from Autism, a light form called Asperger’s Syndrome. As I already said, this kind of disease seem to be quite common between hackers, since it was also diagnosed to Gary McKinnon the author of the Ufo Hack. For sure, it is not a coincidence: probably since they have difficulties in interacting with humans, they use the saved brain resources for interacting with computers, although Topiary, the alleged LulzSec Identity of Ryan Cleary, has also shown great ability with words, astounding the world with the irony and the subtlety of its pastebin press releases.
One thing is certain: the arrests and raids of the past weeks seems unable to stop the wave of attacks against contractors perpetrated by anonymous: the latest few hours ago against PCS Consultants.
This infosec summer is getting hotter and hotter…
