Here's your future botnet, world: connected kids toys that will Rickroll their owners while hosing big servers and guessing the nuclear codes. Hacker Jake Davis, once known as "Topiary" of LulzSec, plucked out the work of Florian Euchner, who pulled apart the Bluetooth variant that toy-maker Hasbro uses to update its "Furby" …

Former LulzSec member Jeremy Hammond - once the FBI's most wanted and charged with hacking security firm Stratfor - seems to have failed to prevent police accessing his laptop due to a poor password. During a police raid in March 2012 he raced through a friend's Chicago home to shut and lock his laptop. But the effort …

The man that Australia's Federal Police once described as "a self-proclaimed leader of the group ‘Lulz Security’ (Lulzsec)" has been sentenced to 15 months of home detention, after a local magistrate decided he was just a very naughty boy. Flannery was sentenced last week in a case that has to date evaded law reports and media …

Hacktivist kingpin turned FBI snitch Hector Xavier "Sabu" Monsegur orchestrated attacks against 30 countries, including systems in the UK and Australia, according to a report that joins the dots between sealed court docs and leaked IRC chat logs. According to the court documents, Monsegur persuaded other hacktivists – among …

Just months after reports emerged that LulzSec "kingpin" turned FBI snitch Hector Xavier Monsegur had allegedly led cyber-attacks against foreign governments while under FBI control, a "cache of sealed court documents" has provided some more startling reading. Monsegur – who prosecutors insist is "Sabu", a leading figure in …

Matthew Flannery, once paraded by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) as the “leader” of international hacking collective LulzSec, has pleaded guilty to the five remaining charges against him, in Gosford Local Court. Flannery has waited since April 2013 to have the case settled. He is to be sentenced at a later date. At the …

Infamous Lulzsec hacker-turned-mole Sabu will not face jail time after the court agreed to cut the police informant's sentence. Hector Xavier Monsegur, better known by his handle Sabu, received a sentence for time already served from a US District Court on Tuesday at the recommendation of prosecutors. Sabu had faced twelve …

After repeated delays by prosecutors, alleged LulzSec “leader” Matthew Flannery has finally had a trial date set, for July this year, in a case expected to last just two days. Working under the name Aush0k, Flannery was originally pitched to the media as a “significant risk” and a “leader” of LulzSec, a claim many doubted at …

Ex-LulzSec chief Sabu orchestrated attacks on government computers in Iran, Syria, Pakistan and Brazil while under the control of the FBI, according to a New York Times investigation. After he was apprehended and turned to became an FBI informant, Hector Xavier "Sabu" Monsegur encouraged fellow Anonymous hackers to hit foreign …

Leaked search warrants suggest Sabu wasn't the only LulzSec hacker who helped the FBI take down the infamous hacktivist group. The unredacted search warrants for ‪Sabu‬ and ‪LulzSec‬ refer to involvement of three different informants in the investigation, at least two of whom it is implied were members of the organisation. …

A LulzSec hacker has been sentenced to a year in a US jail for hacking Sony Pictures and dumping personal information of 138,000 movie fans online. Raynaldo Rivera, 21, of Tempe, Arizona, will spend 366 days behind bars, followed by 13 months of house arrest and 1,000 hours of community service for his involvement in the …

Erstwhile LulzSec spokesman Jake Davis has been freed from detention, with strict conditions on the 20-year-old's use of the internet and computers. Davis (aka Topiary), formerly of Lerwick in Shetland, was convicted of computer hacking over his role in the infamous LulzSec hacking crew in May and banged up for 24 months in …

Jailed Lulzsec hacker Ryan Cleary is due to be released within three weeks, but his access to the internet will be severely restricted after he was convicted of possessing child abuse images – at least some of which featured infants as young as six months old. Cleary, 21, of Wickford, Essex, has already served more than half …

Anonymous member Jeremy Hammond has pleaded guilty to the headline-making December 2011 hack on private intelligence company Stratfor, at a court appearance in New York. Hammond, 27, of Chicago, Illinois, has been held on remand since his arrest in March 2012. He pleaded guilty to one count of violating the computer fraud and …

AnalysisThursday's sentencing of three core members of hacktivist crew LulzSec and an accomplice hacker who gave them access to a botnet closes an important chapter in the history of activism. But it also leaves a number of questions unanswered. One of the most interesting of these puzzlers is the identity of the mysterious sixth …

Three British members of the notorious LulzSec hacktivist crew and a hacker affiliate were sentenced today for a series of attacks against targets including Sony, News International, the CIA and the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency. The youngest of the four accused avoided jail with a suspended sentence while the other three …

So: the person alleged to have described himself as the “leader” of LulzSec was arrested for what, exactly? There's been a lot of noise flowing around, and the odd tip-off (including some to The Register in an extensive phone call on April 29). Since we try to avoid jumping ahead of the court process, we have kept our traps …

UpdatedThe Australian Federal Police (AFP) has arrested a man described "a self-proclaimed leader of the group ‘Lulz Security’ (Lulzsec), a computer hacking group that has existed since 2011." The as-yet-unnamed 24-year-old man was apprehended in the coastal town of Point Clare was arrested after using a known exploit to last month …