Anonymous Picks up Slack as LulzSec Calls it Quits

Hacking season is not over yet. Even though LulzSec, the group of hackers who made a name for themselves by hacking Sony, Nintendo, and PBS among others, called it quits on Saturday, another group wants to pick up the slack.

After announcing the end of its activities, Lulzsec encouraged its 281,870 Twitter followers to follow the account of Anonymous, another hacking organization, which on Monday published new materials on counter-hacking tools and addresses of U.S. FBI locations. Anonymous also picked up more than 60,000 Twitter followers over the past 24 hours.

Acknowledging LulzSec’s retirement, the group released a torrent file containing all the data it obtained over the past seven weeks, including data from prominent targets such as the CIA, U.S. Senate, Sony, and AOL.

Even though LulzSec has been active for only 50 days, the hacking group garnered a significant amount of media attention: “For the past 50 days we’ve been disrupting and exposing corporations, governments, often the general population itself, and quite possibly everything in between, just because we could,” the group says in a goodbye note.

Anonymous is the hacking group that was alleged (but denied any involvement) to be behind the massive Sony PlayStation Service hack earlier this year.

The files Anonymous released Monday include documents and hacking and counter-hacking tools. The data weighs in at 625MB and its exact source is not mentioned, except a link to the CDI Sentinel program page, which provides free cybersecurity training using a mobile computer lab.

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