Legendary hacker turned informant

Associated Press

NEW YORK

The shadowy underworld of Internet hackers was rocked Tuesday by news that one of the world’s most-wanted and most-feared computer vandals has been an FBI informant for months and helped authorities build a case against five people they say were comrades.

The FBI said it captured the legendary hacker known as Sabu last June and he turned out to be Hector Xavier Monsegur, a 28-year-old self-taught, unemployed computer programmer with no college education, living on welfare in public housing in New York.

His exploits made him a hero to some in cyberspace until he made a rookie mistake — he posted something online without cloaking his IP address, or computer identity — and someone tipped off the FBI.

Soon after his arrest, he pleaded guilty and began spilling secrets, leading to charges Tuesday against five people in Europe and the U.S., including a Chicago man who boasted that he’d snared the personal data of a former U.S. vice president and one-time CIA director, and preventing more than 300 attacks along the way, authorities said.

Law-enforcement officials said it marked the first time core members of the loosely organized worldwide hacking group Anonymous have been identified and charged in the U.S.

Monsegur and the other defendants were accused in court papers of hacking into corporations and government agencies around the world, including the U.S. Senate, filching confidential information, defacing websites and temporarily putting victims out of business. Authorities said their crimes affected more than 1 million people.