Lulz Security hacker group said Saturday that it has ended an Internet rampage that included cyberattacks on videogame companies, police and even the CIA's website.
"For the past 50 days, we've been disrupting and exposing corporations, governments, often the general population itself, and quite possibly everything in between, just because we could," the group said in a message uploaded to The Pirate Bay file sharing website.
"It is time to say bon voyage," the message concluded. "We must now sail into the distance." The Lulz farewell contended that the group had a crew of six people and implied the plan from the outset was for the hacking campaign to last 50 days.
While it remained to be seen whether members of the group would truly stop bedevilling the Internet, it was unlikely police would abandon efforts to track them down.
Lulz Security has claimed responsibility for hacking the websites of the Central Intelligence Agency, the US Senate, Sony and others.
On Thursday, the group released hundreds of documents from the Arizona Department of Public Safety in its latest cyberattack.
Lulz Security, or LulzSec, provided a link to the more than 700 documents on its website, LulzSecurity.com. The group said it was protesting Arizona's immigration laws. The documents included information on drug cartels, street gangs, informants, border patrol operations and the names and addresses of members of the Arizona Highway Patrol.
Lulz Security said in a message at the time that it planned to release more classified police or military documents weekly.
In what appeared to be a farewell act, he group dumped a mishmash of evidently plundered data from US telecom giant AT&T, an Irish detective agency, a Nato online book shop, and elsewhere. "Behind the mask, behind the insanity and mayhem, we truly believe in the AntiSec (anti-computer security) movement," Lulz Security said.
A British teenager suspected of involvement with the Lulz Security hacking spree has been remanded in police custody in London.
Ryan Cleary, 19, was arrested at his home in Wickford, south-east England, as part of a probe by Scotland Yard and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation into Lulz Security.
On Wednesday, British police charged Cleary with targeting the website of Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency - the British equivalent of the FBI - with a Distributed Denial of Service attack. DDoS attacks overwhelm websites with requests, causing them slow down or be inaccessible.
Lulz Security has staged a number of DDoS attacks on websites, including that of the CIA, but the group has also carried out a number of large-scale data thefts.
"In the Lulz group, they know what they are doing when it comes to breaking into places," PandaLabs technical director Luis Corrons told AFP.
"It's their way to say the security here sucks and we are going to show you why," he continued. "Based on the way they act, I would say they are young people."
For months, the hacker group brazenly ramped up its antics as waves of cyberattacks showed how poorly defended many networks are against Internet marauders.
Lulz has claimed in recent weeks to have cracked into Sony, Nintendo, the US Senate, the Public Broadcasting System news organisation and an InfraGard, which works with the FBI.
The group flaunted its notoriety with a telephone hotline for people to call and suggest targets for cyberattacks.
"These guys are upsetting a lot of people," said Corrons, whose cyber-threat research team is part of Spain-based Panda Security. "They think they will never be caught, and that could be their biggest mistake."
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