Second accused LulzSec hacker arrested in Sony breach
Arizona man is charged in connection with movie studio security breach that yielded thousands of names, e-mail addresses, and passwords.
A second suspected member of the LulzSec hacker group has been arrested for his alleged role in a 2011 network security breach at Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Raynaldo Rivera, 20, of Tempe, Ariz., surrendered to authorities today in Phoenix, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement. An indictment unsealed today charged Rivera with conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer. He faces 15 years in prison if convicted.
Cody Kretsinger, of Phoenix, was indicted last September in connection with the attack and has pleaded guilty, the FBI said.
Rivera, who is allegedly known by the monikers "neuron" and "royal," is accused of participating in an SQL injection attack on Sony Pictures' Web site in June 2011 and downloading thousands of names, birth dates, addresses, e-mails, phone numbers, and passwords. The information for was then posted to Pastebin, and the attack was announced on the group's Twitter feed.
The hacking group taunted the studio on Twitter, saying it was the "beginning of the end" for Sony.
"Hey @Sony, you know we're making off with a bunch of your internal stuff right now and you haven't even noticed?" LulzSec tweeted. "Slow and steady, guys."
The group boasted on Twitter that it had made off with the personal information for more than a million people, but Sony said the actual number was closer to 37,000.