LulzSec hackers plead guilty to DDoS attack charges

published 25 June 2012

Two members of the hacking group LulzSec have pleaded guilty to staging Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on a series of high-profile websites in the UK and United States.

Twenty-year-old Ryan Cleary from Wickford in Essex appeared at Southwark Crown Court earlier today along with 19-year-old Jake Davies from Lerwick, Shetland.

The pair admitted staging (DDoS) attacks against Sony, Nintendo, News International and 20th Century Fox's websites.

Cleary also pleaded guilty to charges related to hacking attacks against the US Air Force Agency's computers, according to a report on the Daily Telegraph.

However, both pleaded not guilty to allegations they had posted "unlawfully obtained confidential computer data" on The Pirate Bay and PasteBin websites and incited others to take part in similar activities.

The pair will stand trial, along with Ryan Ackroyd, 25, and an unnamed 17-year-old, in April 2013.

Caroline Donnelly is the news and analysis editor of IT Pro and its sister site Cloud Pro, and covers general news, as well as the storage, security, public sector, cloud and Microsoft beats. Caroline has been a member of the IT Pro/Cloud Pro team since March 2012, and has previously worked as a reporter at several B2B publications, including UK channel magazine CRN, and as features writer for local weekly newspaper, The Slough and Windsor Observer. She studied Medical Biochemistry at the University of Leicester and completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Magazine Journalism at PMA Training in 2006.