Dial-a-Hacker: LulzSec Opens Request Line for Next Target

Have you ever felt so angry at a company that you wished its website was hacked to shreds, but you didn’t have the technical expertise required? Here comes LulzSec to the rescue. The marauding hackers, with their huge and growing list of conquests — including PBS, the FBI and the U.S. Senate, pornography and gaming sites, and most of all, Sony — opened a hack request line during their latest merry jaunt, Titanic Takeover Tuesday.

Titanic Takeover Tuesday saw the disruption of the websites for The Escapist and the IT security company Finfisher, as well as the login servers for EVE Online, Minecraft and League of Legends. Afterward, the group posted a telephone number on its Twitter feed with this message:

“Now accepting calls from true lulz fans – let’s all laugh together at butthurt gamers. 614-LULZSEC, accepting as many as we can, let’s roll.”

A few hours later the group claimed to have received 5,000 missed calls and 2,500 voicemails. The 614 area code represents the metropolitan area of Columbus, Ohio, but only an irresponsible gambler would wager that that’ll help authorities locate members of LulzSec in the slightest.

It’s unsure whether the phone number will be used for future hacks or if its purpose has been spent. Either way, posting a number where anonymous users can recommend future victims of the group’s illegal activity is a brazen move. LulzSec is begging to get busted, but also, in a perverse way, “giving back” to a community that enjoys seeing the flaws of big companies exposed. The ironic twist is that these big companies are made big by the average public whose private information is being revealed in the hacks.