Suspected Lulzsec member arrested in U.S. faces 15-year sentence

PanARMENIAN.Net - A man suspected of being a member of hacking group Lulzsec has been arrested in the US, the FBI has said, according to BBC News.

Raynaldo Rivera, 20, is accused of being involved in hacks on Sony Pictures in May and June last year, in which thousands of personal details were published online.

If convicted, he could face up to 15 years in prison.

The FBI alleged he had worked with Cody Kretsinger, a 24-year-old who pleaded guilty to hacking charges in April.

Lulzsec, an off-shoot of the Anonymous hacking collective, gained notoriety last year with a string of high-profile attacks on websites and businesses.

In the Sony hack, which the company said had cost it $600,000 (£380,000), people who had entered competitions had their personal details exposed on the internet.

Alleged members of the group have to date been arrested in the U.S., UK and Ireland.

An indictment containing details of Rivera's arrest accused him and others of stealing data from Sony using a hacking technique known as an SQL injection. The indictment said Rivera had helped to post the confidential information onto the internet, and had been involved in publicizing the attack on Twitter.

Several members of the group have been arrested and subsequently appeared in court. In the UK, Ryan Cleary, 19, and Jake Davis, 18, both admitted being part of the group in June.

Lulzsec claimed to have attacked News International, whose website for The Sun was defaced with a false story suggesting the newspaper's owner Rupert Murdoch had died.

Lulzsec had previously posted a story on American broadcaster PBS's website suggesting dead rapper Tupac Shakur was in fact alive.