The UK Police has named the teenager that they claim to be Topiary, one of the core people in the hacking ring LulzSec, despite controversy over whether if the Police have the right man.
The man, arrested in the remote Shetland Islands, is an 18-year-old named Jake Davis. However, all we know about him is that he is apparently an avid chess player (according to Sophos). A quick search online however doesn’t turn up much information.
According to Sophos, he has been charged for:
- 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.
Despite the police being adamant that they have the right Topiary, many security analysts and hackers have claimed that they have the wrong guy. One group, called the Web Ninjas who run the LulzSec Exposed blog, have claimed that Topiary is a 22-year-old Swede.
Another hacker named The Jester has also put doubt after posting a conversation in which Topiary admits that he had stolen his alias from another person – calling him a “troll” and lives in the north of England:
<[removed]> ah, well, you should keep low man
<Topiary> I can’t at this point, I need to just straight up deny it 100% and flaunt it everywhere
<Topiary> but I trust you, you know how it is
<Topiary> if I go hide then people will assume the dox are right
<Topiary> so I’ll just act like they failed hard
<[removed]> True that – so you need to make a big show of disproving them
<Topiary> yeah well, this is my plan:
<Topiary> (as you know I stole this nickname from a troll last December, didn’t work out so well)
<Topiary> I’ll just keep denying it until they try to go after the troll
<Topiary> then they’ll think that’s me and harass him
<[removed]> then he harasses back?
<Topiary> yeah but if I deny my real dox enough, people will go looking for other dox
<Topiary> then nobody will believe I’m me
However, LulzSec has been suspiciously quiet on the issue, with their Twitter account’s last update being on July 27 – the same day that Topiary was arrested. Topiary was the guy responsible for their Twitter account.
The group has recently re-emerged, after supposedly disbanding after a 50-day hacking campaign. In addition, the group has partnered with Anonymous in an “Anti-Sec” movement, which is opposed to the computer security industry, claiming that the full disclosure of security vulnerabilities are used to scare people into buying software (we really, however, do urge you to install at least an antivirus system)