This article was published on August 1, 2011

LulzSec’s ‘Topiary’ had 750,000 people’s personal details, prosecutors claim


LulzSec’s ‘Topiary’ had 750,000 people’s personal details, prosecutors claim

The man arrested on suspicion of being Topiary, a key member of ‘hacktivist’ group LulzSec, has made his first appearance in court today. The suspect stands accused of hacking the Serious & Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), the UK organization that tackles serious crimes involving Class A drugs, people smuggling and human trafficking, major gun crime, fraud, computer crime and money laundering.

We first reported on his arrest last week, and yesterday it emerged that the man’s name was Jake Davis, an 18-year old from the Shetland Islands.

Jake Davis is accused of carrying out a ‘distributed denial of service’ (DDoS) attack on SOCA, in an attempt to crash its computer system.

The suspected LulzSec member is accused of coordinating Anonymous and LulzSec attacks from his home in Yell, on the Shetland Islands. His laptop was examined and it reportedly showed that he wrote a fake article claiming that Rupert Murdoch was dead, and such an article appeared on the Sun’s website recently when its own website was hacked. The hearing today also revealed that Davis’ computer had 750,000 people’s personal details, including private log-in information.

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Davis appeared in court wearing a blue shirt over a black t-shirt, and he also wore dark shades as he entered court.

Tim Bradshaw, Digital Media Correspondent at the Financial Times, posted this photograph of Jake Davis outside the court. Bradshaw also noted that Davis was carrying a book called Free Radicals: the secret anarchy of science:

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