
Ryan Ackroyd, a 26-year-old from South Yorkshire, pleaded guilty to a single count of a computer-related hacking charge, according to a report in U.K.'s The Guardian newspaper. Ackroyd admitted in court to being involved with hactivist organization Lulz Security, otherwise known as LulzSec, and to plotting a series of attacks on websites such as 20th Century Fox, Sony, Nintendo, News International, Arizona state police in the U.S., and other targets.
According to ArsTechnica, the "forlorn figure" fessed up to being one of the head honchos at LulzSec and also the identity that Anon knew as "kayla," which he portrayed as a 16-year-old girl.
Fellow LulzSec members Jack "topiary" Davis (20 years old), Mustafa "tflow" al-Bassam (18 years old), and Ryan "DDoS King" Cleary (21 years old) also pleaded guilty to the same charge of "conspiring to do an unauthorized act to impair the operation of a computer or computers." All three ducked charges of conspiracy to perform distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against Westboro Baptist Church, Sony, Bethesda, Eve Online, the CIA, and a few other organizations after the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute them, ArsTechnica reports.
Cleary was also charged with four other crimes, including constructing a botnet, making the botnet available for others, infiltrating Pentagon computers, and initiating a DDoS attack against DreamHost. All four men face further charges related to hacking.
The four will be sentenced on May 14, each one facing up to 10 years behind bars.
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