Britain: 2 Lulz Security hackers plead guilty - San Francisco Chronicle

London --

Two British hackers linked to the notorious Lulz Security group pleaded guilty to a slew of computer crimes Monday, the latest blow against online miscreants whose exploits have grabbed headlines and embarrassed governments around the world.

Ryan Cleary, 20, and Jake Davis, 19, pleaded guilty to conspiring with other members of LulzSec to attack government, media and law enforcement websites last year, according to Gryff Waldron, an official at London's Southwark Crown Court.

LulzSec - an offshoot of the loose-knit movement known as Anonymous - has claimed responsibility for assaults on sites run by the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Public Broadcasting Service, and media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News International. Other targets included media and gaming giants Nintendo Co. and Sony Inc., security company HBGary Inc., Britain's National Health Service and the Arizona State Police.

Waldron said two other defendants - 25-year-old Ryan Ackroyd and an unnamed 17-year-old - have pleaded not guilty to the same charges and will face trial in April.

All four defendants have denied two counts of encouraging or assisting others to commit computer offenses and fraud. Waldron said prosecutors were still weighing whether to take Cleary and Davis to court on the remaining charges.

LulzSec, whose name draws on Internet-speak for "laugh out loud," shot to prominence in mid-2011 with an eye-catching attack on PBS, whose website it defaced with a bogus story claiming that the late rapper Tupac Shakur had been discovered alive in New Zealand.

The hackers repeatedly humbled law enforcement - stealing data from FBI partner organization InfraGard, briefly jamming the website of Britain's Serious and Organized Crime Agency and publishing a large cache of e-mails from the Arizona Department of Public Safety.

The cybercrime spree focused attention on Anonymous, a loose-knit collection of Web-savvy activists and Internet pranksters. LulzSec and its reputed leader, known as Sabu, had some of the highest profiles in the movement. But in March, U.S. officials unmasked Sabu as FBI informant Hector Xavier Monsegur and officials on both sides of the Atlantic swooped in on his alleged collaborators, making roughly half a dozen arrests.