This past weekend, the hacking group – LulzSec (Lulz Security), has retired. The announcement was made via Twitter on their @LulzSec account and on their website. The short tweet proclaimed:

Following the link of their “press release” statement on Pastebin gives these words:

Friends around the globe,

We are Lulz Security, and this is our final release, as today marks something meaningful to us. 50 days ago, we set sail with our humble ship on an uneasy and brutal ocean: the Internet. The hate machine, the love machine, the machine powered by many machines. We are all part of it, helping it grow, and helping it grow on us.

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. All to selflessly entertain others – vanity, fame, recognition, all of these things are shadowed by our desire for that which we all love. The raw, uninterrupted, chaotic thrill of entertainment and anarchy. It’s what we all crave, even the seemingly lifeless politicians and emotionless, middle-aged self-titled failures. You are not failures. You have not blown away. You can get what you want and you are worth having it, believe in yourself.

While we are responsible for everything that The Lulz Boat is, we are not tied to this identity permanently. Behind this jolly visage of rainbows and top hats, we are people. People with a preference for music, a preference for food; we have varying taste in clothes and television, we are just like you. Even Hitler and Osama Bin Laden had these unique variations and style, and isn’t that interesting to know? The mediocre painter turned supervillain liked cats more than we did.

Again, behind the mask, behind the insanity and mayhem, we truly believe in the AntiSec movement. We believe in it so strongly that we brought it back, much to the dismay of those looking for more anarchic lulz. We hope, wish, even beg, that the movement manifests itself into a revolution that can continue on without us. The support we’ve gathered for it in such a short space of time is truly overwhelming, and not to mention humbling. Please don’t stop. Together, united, we can stomp down our common oppressors and imbue ourselves with the power and freedom we deserve.

So with those last thoughts, it’s time to say bon voyage. Our planned 50 day cruise has expired, and we must now sail into the distance, leaving behind – we hope – inspiration, fear, denial, happiness, approval, disapproval, mockery, embarrassment, thoughtfulness, jealousy, hate, even love. If anything, we hope we had a microscopic impact on someone, somewhere. Anywhere.

Thank you for sailing with us. The breeze is fresh and the sun is setting, so now we head for the horizon.

Let it flow…

Lulz Security – our crew of six wishes you a happy 2011, and a shout-out to all of our battlefleet members and supporters across the globe

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Please make mirrors of material on the website, because we’re not renewing the hosting. Goodbye. <3″

Planned? Was this last 50 days truly planned or did the members and leader of LulzSec realize that law enforcement was closing in on them, thereby giving them a sense of urgency in fleeing before they get caught? After-all, it was only this last Thursday that the group released a cache of information from Arizona law enforcement and declared that every week they would do something similar.  As taken from their last “press release” statement:

“Every week we plan on releasing more classified documents and embarassing
personal details of military and law enforcement in an effort not just to reveal their racist and corrupt nature but to purposefully sabotage their efforts to terrorize communities fighting an unjust “war on drugs“.

This statement leads one to believe that they had future releases planned – many of which were hinted to be banking and governments institutions.  So what exactly happened?  Were they aware law enforcement was close to capturing them?  Did they run out of steam, or did they completely switch gears and realize to truly be a part of Anonymous, that the tweets and fights on Twitter did them no good under the LulzSec name?  While the attacks under the LulzSec name look to be at an end, the much larger picture to focus on now is the hacker collective known as Anonymous.

Along with their press statement was also a new release of information.  Since the writing of this post, the torrent was remove by The Pirate Bay due to claims of the torrent being infected with some sort of trojan.  Interesting.  Was this just by chance or perhaps, was it planned to add many more infected PCs to the botnet that they possess?   Whatever the real reason, TPB pulled it.

We will try and update our LulzSec timeline of attacks to the best of our knowledge and if anything further arises.  It’s important to note one final thing  before we close this chapter.  While LulzSec is disbanded and despite what the press has written, they clearly have started a movement – #antisec.  Hacking groups and individual hackers have seem to come out of the woodwork attacking low priority targets – some random companies; some government institutions.  Regardless, the agenda and the “lulz” that Lulz Security inspired seems to be here to stay for at least now.