Suspected LulzSec member arrested by FBI for Sony Pictures hack

Graham Cluley
Graham Cluley
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A man suspected of hacking into computer systems belonging to Sony Pictures, and stealing the personal information and passwords of thousands of innocent internet users, has been arrested by the FBI.

20-year-old Raynaldo Rivera, of Tempe, Arizona, is said to have been involved in the Sony hack last year that exposed online the names, birth dates, addresses, emails, phone numbers and passwords of people who had entered Sony contests.

At the time LulzSec published what they called a “Pretentious Press Statement” about the hack which was said to have been done via an SQL injection attack against a vulnerable Sony website:

“SonyPictures.com was owned by a very simple SQL injection, one of the most primitive and common vulnerabilities, as we should all know by now. From a single injection, we accessed EVERYTHING. Why do you put such faith in a company that allows itself to become open to these simple attacks?”

The security breach is said to have cost Sony over $600,000.

According to the FBI, Rivera was an accomplice of 24-year-old LulzSec member Cody Kretsinger, who pleaded guilty in April to charges connected to the Sony Pictures hack, reversing an earlier not guilty plea…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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