February 28, 2014
Anonymous, Banking, Crime, Hacking,Internet, Law, UK, USA
The United States Department of Justice this week unsealed its third indictment in four months against Lauri Love, a United Kingdom resident now accused of hacking into a computer system used by the US Federal Reserve.
On Thursday, federal prosecutors in New York announced that an indictment filed against the 20-something Stradishall, Suffolk man nearly a week earlier had been unsealed, publicizing a new pair of charges against Love: one count each of computer hacking and aggravated identity theft.
“As alleged, Lauri Love is a sophisticated hacker who broke into Federal Reserve computers, stole sensitive personal information and made it widely available, leaving people vulnerable to malicious use of that information,” US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara said in a statementreleased by the Justice Dept. on Thursday.
“We place a high priority on the investigation and prosecution of hackers who intrude into our infrastructure and threaten the personal security of our citizens,” added Bharara, who since 2012 has been overseeing the prosecution of Hector Monsegur, a former New York City hacker currently awaiting sentencing for a laundry list of criminal offenses he helped carry out as a member of the hacktivist groupAnonymous and an offshoot, LulzSec, before agreeing to act as a federal informant.
Love has yet to be charged in the UK, and authorities there could neither confirm nor deny to the BBC this week if an extradition to America is being sought. Should he be sent stateside, however, Love will likely have to defend himself against allegations that he hacked more than just the US central bank. As RT reported previously, indictments were unsealed against Love last October in New Jersey and Virginia which together accused him of compromising the computer systems of the US Army, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, NASA, the Department of Health and Human Services, the US Sentencing Commission, the Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory and the US Department of Energy.
“Collectively, the hacks described herein substantially impaired the functioning of dozens of computer servers and resulted in millions of dollars of damages to the government victims,” prosecutors said then.
Now according to the indictment unsealed in New York this week, Love is believed by investigators to have also hacked into a Federal Reserve computer system starting in late 2012 “in order to steal and then publicly disseminate confidential information,” including the personal identification information of people authorized to use that network.