LulzSec hackers plead guilty

Security group pleaded guilty to a slew of computer crimes on Monday, the latest blow against online miscreants whose exploits have grabbed headlines and embarrassed governments around the world, The Washington Post reports.

Ryan Cleary, 20, and Jake Davis, 19, pleaded guilty to conspiring with other members of LulzSec to attack government, media and law enforcement Web sites 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 US Public Broadcasting Service and media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News International.

Other targets included media and gaming giants Nintendo and Sony, security company HBGary, Britain's National Health Service, and Arizona State Police, The Brisbane Times writes.

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 of next year.

All four defendants have denied two counts of encouraging or assisting others to commit computer offences and fraud. Waldron said prosecutors were still considering 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 Web site it defaced with a bogus story claiming that the late rapper Tupac Shakur had been discovered alive in New Zealand, Statesman.com notes.

It was an opening shot in what became a months-long campaign of data theft, online vandalism and denial-of-service attacks, which work by jamming target Web sites with bogus traffic.

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