back to article LulzSec says it will partner with media on Murdoch emails

LulzSec has abandoned plans to release a cache of News International emails it claimed to have acquired during a redirection attack on The Sun website earlier this week. Instead the group says it plans to release select batches of the emails via a "partnership" with select media outlets, an approach akin to that applied by …

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  1. Bunker_Monkey
    FAIL

    Yawn..

    That or they dont have anything....

    1. schnide

      Because if they did and don't release it..

      ..then that would somewhat contradict their various statements about how they don't fear the authorities AND are just doing it for teh lulz.

      I think either way, it's a real shame that they couldn't have been more responsible with the powers at their disposal, but maybe that's just default by the very nature of their existence. I just hope that if they do have something on NI, then they DO finally learn some responsibility with that, and it only helps bring those responsible for wrongdoing - whoever or wherever they may be - to justice.

      1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        FAIL

        RE: Because if they did and don't release it..

        Duh! They have already screwed the case royally as now NONE of the email evidence can be submitted as "clean", and any documentation stored as files on the NI servers will have to ignored as you can't prove the providence. Way to go, Lultwtiz, you just gave Murdoch the best help he could wish for.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Trollface

      Re: Yawn

      lulz

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yawn

      I'm no Murdoch fan, but who the hell is that Nicola Blackwood?

      She made my blood boil! So I can't imagine what the guys being interrogated by her must have felt!

      Maybe get her on the streets doing police work, because it's pretty obviuous she lives in f*ing cuckoo land and has no concept of the real world. Who the hell voted voted for her?!?

    4. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Happy

      RE: Yawn..

      Patience. After all, forgeries don't happen overnight.....

  2. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Hoax (IMO)

    Yeah, as if any news agency is going to risk burning their hands by assisting or aiding a bunch of "notorious hackers". Ones which also have a reputation of being untrustworthy; they'll simply do whatever they want for the "lulz". So what is to stop them from promising the material for $cash (for example) and then refusing to cough it up ?

    And so; when the e-mails never appear in the open Lulz are probably going to blame it all on the media which "didn't want to aid us to release the material" and as such try to move away the attention from the most obvious conclusion: that they didn't have the material to begin with.

    1. tonysmith

      Rupert would!

      "Yeah, as if any news agency is going to risk burning their hands by assisting or aiding a bunch of "notorious hackers""

      NI and NOTW would do it!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    uh oh

    Quick, try and look respectable. The cops are outside.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Trollface

      Re: Look respectable

      Don't worry, I'll put on my coolface.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Qualms?

    "Any mainstream media outlet that published the information may have some ethical qualms about dealing with the anarchic hacking collective..."

    Isn't LulzSec as self-selecting as Anonymous? If so, how do you differentiate between $theseGuys and $thoseGuys? And how would you verify any claims anyway?

    Perhaps it was me - after all, I've got the mask...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    If they do ....

    ... in fact have anything (which they don't), the stupid twats raided their most likely future employer.

  6. Graham Dawson Silver badge

    So...

    To attack Murdoch for his alleged involvement in a media backing scandal, they're going to encourage the media to... get involved in another media hacking scandal.

    Right.

    1. Scorchio!!
      Thumb Up

      RE: So...

      "To attack Murdoch for his alleged involvement in a media backing scandal, they're going to encourage the media to... get involved in another media hacking scandal.

      Right."

      Ah, but to paraphrase Robin Cooke, this would be 'hacking' with "an ethical dimension". [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1997/may/12/indonesia.ethicalforeignpolicy ]

  7. Richard 22
    FAIL

    Irony

    So, they want to partner with media organisations to publish some illegally hacked emails. Which presumably are pertaining to a media organisation using illegal hacking to obtain information. I really can't see any mainstream press touching this right now, even if the claimed archive does exist.

    1. 5.antiago

      Well...

      I am reminded of the day it was announced that the NOTW was to close. The mainstream press was happy to highlight the scandal of too-close media and police links. On the *same* day, these same organisations reported that Andy Coulson was to be arrested the following day, thereby demonstrating that their own links to the police are pretty close!

      If they think no one will notice the irony, they'll do it...

      Also, there is a place for hacked information to be used in journalism, but Julian Assange can tell you about that better than me

  8. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Gag me with a spoon

    "Any mainstream media outlet that published the information may have some ethical qualms about dealing with the anarchic hacking collective"

    "Mainstream media" has no problem at all sourcing "unnamed insiders", "leakers", "experts" and assorted bureaucratic riffraff when they want to splatter the latest economic "analysis", war spin or govnmt feel-good news onto the front page.

    Now they would suddenly be virginal goody two-shoes?

    RIGHT!

    1. Sam Haine
      FAIL

      Publish and be prosecuted

      Media organisations use information obtained illegally all the time - one example is payments to police officers for leads - but publishing information obviously obtained illegally without a public interest defence is asking to be prosecuted. Since LulzSec ( = CluLesz) have publically announced that they've obtained the information illegally, very few media organisations will want to publish that information and so declare themselves accomplices to a crime.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is a good thing if true

    Lulz can be had without maiming the innocent.

  10. Jeremy 2
    FAIL

    I reckon they've got emails but....

    I reckon they have got a trove of emails, which led to them gloating about it initially but on closer inspection, they've found that they're boring as hell and contain nothing juicy... Hence stalling for time and clamouring for a media partner to take some of the slack when they're eventually released with a whimper...

    If they had anything worthwhile, they'd have released it by now.

  11. Buzzword

    Four gigabytes?

    My Outlook PST files fill up approximately 1 GB per year; and I'm not a heavy emailer. Sounds like they don't have much information..

    1. Miek
      Linux

      Wow

      Tarring all our email clients with the Outlook Tarbrush

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Four gigabytes?

      "My Outlook PST files fill up approximately 1 GB per year; and I'm not a heavy emailer. Sounds like they don't have much information."

      I can't remember if it was NI or not, but I seem to remember some corporate backups getting lost on route to India, where they were being sent for archieve?

    3. mark 63 Silver badge

      re 4gb

      It amazes me how much room emails seem to take up!

      4gb is over 4 billion characters. thats quite a few!

      a complete works of shakepear pdf is 35mb , a hundred of those would only be 3.5 gb!

      granted 90% of email space is wasted on fancy hthml backgrounds and shit.

  12. Dennis Wilson

    Lack of staff

    They had no option. Due to the police raids and arrests they now have a shortage of people who can read

    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Happy

      RE: Lack of staff

      I was going to say "old enough to read" would be closer to the truth! I reckon they're busy scanning the web for a downloadable app to read the emails to them, seeing as all their "skillz" seem to be downloaded toolz.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Coffee/keyboard

    Idiots

    My personal email archive is around 27GB with a market leading product. That's 9 years of emails that are the result of culling, G*D knows how big my archive would be were it not for single-instancing, etc...

    4GB, feh, I've got more stuff on a Sushi USB key. Small peanuts if they even have anything.

    Which they don't.

    1. James Hughes 1

      27GB

      Is about 27 Encyclopedia Britannica's. You type a lot.

      (Or just perhaps you have lots of image data in there. Which a hack probably wouldn't bother to download because of the time to do it. In which case, 4GB of email TEXT is a hell of a lot)

    2. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge
      Paris Hilton

      @Small peanuts.

      Yes, I have small peanuts. It's genetic defect. But it's far better than having no peanuts at all.

      Paris, because she's not fussy about the size of her nuts.

  14. Ryan Robinson
    FAIL

    Hmmm

    dox or gtfo

  15. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

    Translation

    "We have not found didley squat in those emails so we called some professional spin doctors (of the kind who listen to people's voice mail) to see if they can turn some "I'm off to the pub" emails into some sort of smoking gun coded evidence of conspiracy..."

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    so where's the other priority emails?

    still waiting on the Soros email hack to occur.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Yeah right

    Oh ok, now all of a sudden they "care" about releasing personal information. Yet these same groups had no problem whatsoever releasing hundreds of thousands of emails, logins, passwords for normal citizens, and release thousands of law enforcement personal info that put their families at risk from drug lords.

    These groups are nothing but hypocrites and criminals.

    And Lulzsec did NOT disband, they still even have their twitter accounts posting on them. One of their higher members was even arrested yesterday.

    And of course that brings up Twitter, who apparently is supporting and helping criminal activity by allowing these groups on their website. At least Google has the balls to stand up to them and do the right thing by denying them any webspace and their email accounts.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      As much as I hate writing this...

      "Innocent until proven guilty".

      I have no love lost for lulz, IMO they're close to phoneys. I don't say they didn't do anything themselves, but they sure know how to exaggerate IMO.

      That said; as long as the owner of said twitter feed hasn't been arrested and convicted I think Twitter (I don't like social networks too; what a boring cynic I am ;-)) does a good job. Just because they "tweet" or "google plus" or whatever information you don't like doesn't mean that they should be removed "because". Freedom of speech should prevail here.

      I agree that in this case it looks all to easy; "bad group" and "bad feed talking about group".

      Other scenario: someone starts to warn people using twitter about $stuff and some $badguys start following his examples (which were integer) to set bad examples ? Time to shut him up too because he has the odds against him ("he's got to be the mastermind behind it...") or....?

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Put up or shut up

    That is all.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Meh

    Pointing out the irony of this?

    I think the real irony of this is the way some commentards are reacting.

    The original complaint was that people felt if they released it, it could threaten the court case. Then they would be SCUM!

    Now that they have decided to not publish it due to this fear, and instead work with the "official" news to release information in small amounts... they're... SCUM FOR SOME OTHER REASON! Maybe they're lying about having stuff? Or maybe this is all some conspiracy by Lulz to avoid getting in trouble after the fact? Or maybe they didn't find anything good? Or maybe "DAMN THIS WANNABE NOSKILL SCRIPT KIDDIES, I HATE THEM".

    No matter what they do, apparently some people are absolutely hell-bent on hating them. I certainly am disgusted by most of their actions in the past, but I'm going to hope that they are just trying to be a bit more responsible. Or we could all speculate endlessly at what these "pimply bastard script-kiddy wannabe hackers" are hiding from us, coming up with conspiracy theories on why exactly they didn't release the information after we asked them not to with strong supporting reasons why.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      Horse Whipped

      Nope, don't see the irony? They are scurvy dogs who should be spliced to the main brace (sic), flogged and keel hauled.

    2. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      FAIL

      RE: Pointing out the irony of this?

      "I think the real irony of this is the way some commentards are reacting....." I think the real tradegy is that the Lultwitz/Anonyputz/Dikileaks supporters like you can't see the legal impact of the hack, regardless of whether the emails get released.

      ".....The original complaint was that people felt if they released it, it could threaten the court case....." No, the original complaint was that the hack destroyed the providence of any evidence that the police may have been able to find on the NI servers or email archives. All Murdoch has to do now is say "Well, who knows what thse silly kids did to my data!" and he walks.

      ".....No matter what they do, apparently some people are absolutely hell-bent on hating them....." I actually had some respect for them standing up against cults like the Scientologists which was actually beneficial to the population in general. Years ago I was involved with another group that helped people get out of the cult. I'm pretty sure some of the people I knew then are fringe Anons now, and if they had stuck to bashing the Scientologists I'd have lent them my resources. But I don't like being herded around by a few "non-leaders" with a political agenda, hiding it all behind some declaration of "doing it for the good of the people", or worse, "just for lulz".

  20. The Mighty Spang
    FAIL

    'because of a court case?'

    really? after all they've done? worried about contempt of court? not about all the hacking they've done?

    something smelly fishy. it's a fish.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Send a sample to an MP

    They can then discuss them (if there is anything to discuss) safely under Parliamentary privilege.

  22. bitmap animal

    Single PST?

    Isn't 4GB the maximum size of an Outlook PST? They have possibly got one persons local PST archive or possibly some kind of shadow copy.

  23. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Devil

    RE: Send a sample to an MP

    Yeah, I can just see how that conversation goes:

    MP: Hello, who is this?

    SKIDDIOT: I iz the Anonymous and I iz sending you the lulz from our NI ploit.

    MP: I'm sorry, caller, do you speak English? Parlez vous Anglais?

    SKIDDIOT: Listen, you minger (<= gratuitous Jo Brand ref), we haz the mailz from Murdoch and his beeyatch Wade, you wantz?

    MP: I'm sorry, if you want the minister responsible for immigration policy then that's-"

    SKIDDIOT: ARRRGGHH!!! You iz so stooopid, man! I - haz - the - NI - emailz - archive!

    MP: Ah! You're a member of that hacking group, Lollypops!

    SKIDDIOT: Lulzsec, dammit!

    MP: OK, Mr Lulzsec Dammit, how can I help you?

    SKIDDIOT: Like I said, I haz the emailz from Murdoch's servers, I would like youz to uze dat Parleementry Privs stuff to get dem into the media. And my name is not Mr Dammit, I iz Anonymous.

    MP: But you're a member of my constituency?

    SKIDDIOT: Wha? Why you wantz to know dat? Iz you trying to dox me?

    MP: Erm.... I'm sorry, I have no idea what your on about.

    SKIDDIOT: You politicians iz all de same, you iz all scum! Come the revolution....!

    <line disconnects>

  24. opaque

    Hurry up!

    Send it to the police then.

    If they are going to share it they should share it on Sunday ;)

  25. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Coffee/keyboard

    RE: Hurry up!

    "....If they are going to share it they should share it on Sunday ;)" Excellent!

  26. Craig 12

    Didn't LulzSec finger...

    ... the Guardian last night? They named a specific person who was working with them and subsequently burnt them, but the tweet is now gone.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    Guardian?

    > Didn't LulzSec finger the Guardian last night?

    Can't be them ... The Guardian take a very high moral view over illegal obtain materials :-)

    (Oh, sorry, I forgot the "unless we get an exclusive like we got from Wikileaks" clause)

  28. dephormation.org.uk
    Holmes

    Dilemma

    Can the Guardian/Telegraph publish the content of emails stolen by criminal computer hackers from criminal telephone hackers?

    Or should we trust the corrupt Metropolitan police to put the evdience in bin bags and ignore it instead?

    This country is so f***ed up.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pass the beer popcorn...

    Beer please.

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