After 50 days of mayhem, the computer hacking group LulzSec said it will end its campaign of cyberassaults on government and corporate Web sites and that it was time for it to “sail into the distance.”
Its announcement came three days after LulzSec released its latest trove of internal documents, stolen from the Arizona Department of Public Safety computer network, and four days after U.K. police said they had made the first arrest of a man allegedly affiliated with the group.
“Our planned 50 day cruise has expired, and we must now sail into the distance, leaving behind – we hope – inspiration, fear, denial, happiness, approval, disapproval, mockery, embarrassment, thoughtfulness, jealousy, hate, even love,” the group said in a post on the Pastebin Web site.
“If anything, we hope we had a microscopic impact on someone, somewhere. Anywhere.”
LulzSec spent the last several weeks attacking Web sites and computer networks of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Senate, the U.K.’s Serious Organised Crime Agency, the Brazilian government and the energy giant Petrobras, among others.
Last Tuesday U.K. police said they had arrested a 19-year-old man who they said was a member of the group. LulzSec said he had operated one of its Internet Relay Chat (IRC) servers but that he was not one of its leaders.
On Saturday, shortly after group’s last missive was posted, a hacker thought to be one of the group’s leaders, Sabu, dismissed a suggestion that LulzSec disbanded because of the arrest or any internal disagreement.
“If you read the statement your questions will be answered,” he wrote in a Twitter message. “There’s only been one arrest; Ryan, and he isn’t part of lulzsec.”
LulzSec conducted its campaign “just because we could,” it said in its statement.
“All to selflessly entertain others — vanity, fame, recognition, all of these things are shadowed by our desire for that which we all love. The raw, uninterrupted, chaotic thrill of entertainment and anarchy.”