LulzSec hackers plead guilty to their roles in Anonymous hacks

Ryan "kayla" Ackroyd, 26, Jake "topiary" Davis, 20, and Mustafa "tflow" Al-Bassam, 18, all members of LulzSec a splinter group of Anonymous have plead guilty to "conspiring to do an unauthorized act to impair the operation of a computer or computers."

BBC News reports that Lulzsec, which stands for Lulz Security - in which "Lulz" is derived from the popular internet term "lol", meaning "laugh out loud", emerged as a splinter-group of the Anonymous hacking collective in May 2011.

The charges stem from hacks of high profile targets such as; Sony 20th Century Fox, PBS, Infragard, Nintendo, the Arizona State Police, and News International to name a few.

BBC News listed some of the groups attacks included a report that Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Sun newspaper website had died, and one on PBS that Tupac Shakur was alive.

Ryan Cleary a fourth member of the group entered his guilty plea last year, his charges included constructing a botnet, making it available to others, hacking into Pentagon computers, and performing a DDoS attack against DreamHost.

ars technica showed that the Crown Prosecution Service left on file but decided not to prosecute charges of conspiracy to perform DDoS attacks against Westboro Baptist Church, Sony, Bethesda, Eve Online, the CIA, the Serious Organized Crimes Agency in the UK, and News International.

Sentencing has been set for May 14th at Southwark Crown Court in London. Ackroyd and Davis were not remanded into custody, but have to adhere to strict release provisions; both must wear electronic monitoring devices, have no access to the internet, nor have third parties access it for them, and submit to a curfew.

As far as the electronic monitoring devices are concerned it seems that the London court has not paid attention to the fact that they can be disabled with terrible consequences.

All four face a maximum sentence of ten years, but are likely to receive less.