‘Lulzsec leader carried out attacks on countries for US’

As an FBI informant, Hector Xavier Monsegur, the man active within Anonymous and Lulzsec, was also involved in setting up and carrying out hundreds of cyber attacks on government sites in Iran, Brazil and Pakistan, among others.

The New York Times reports this based on re-requested court documents and conversations with a number of sources, including convicted hacker Jeremy Hammond. Hector Xavier Monsegur, better known as Sabu within the disbanded Lulzsec movement, was previously revealed to be an FBI informant when three Lulzsec leaders were arrested in March 2012.

Court documents, among other things, show that Monsegur has also carried out hundreds of cyber attacks on government sites of various countries, including Iran, Brazil, Turkey, Nigeria and Pakistan. The websites of the Embassy of Poland in the United Kingdom and the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity were also allegedly targeted. The stolen data was allegedly sent to a server owned by the FBI at Monsegur’s request.

The FBI informant allegedly let the hackers use a vulnerability in the widely used web hosting package Plesk. Although the documents do not show that the FBI or any other US government agency directly or indirectly ordered hackers to steal sensitive data from foreign powers through cyber attacks, Monsegur’s involvement does seem to indicate this. In addition, the role of the FBI informant appears to be considerably larger than previously thought. The FBI declined to comment on the New York Times article.