In the flurry of news stories surrounding the AntiSec movement yesterday, one report stuck out for us. The report said that tFlow, a high ranking member of LulzSec, was arrested in the UK and facing extradition to the United States. After speaking to members of Anonymous, however, that report remains unconfirmed. Fox News told ZeroPaid that the report is confirmed.
Note: This is an article I wrote that was published elsewhere first. It has been republished here for archival purposes
Update: Fox News said that the report originated from them. Jeremy Kaplan told ZeroPaid in an e-mail this morning, “I assume you’re referencing my reporting on this topic. FoxNews.com HAS confirmed the hacker’s identity.”
The Fox News report on this story says it is, in fact, tFlow that was arrested and out on bail. When we spoke to Anonymous, one person was kind enough to send us a link to tFlow’s Twitter account. To be fair to Fox News, that Twitter account hasn’t been updated in a while, but the sentiment amongst Anonymous members was that tFlow is the kind of user that isn’t on Twitter every day. In fact, tFlow is one of those users that is off and on.
End of update
There was a report on the Telegraph recently that said a 16 year old is facing extradition to the United States over his involvement with LulzSec. From the report:
The teenager was arrested in south London amid a new wave of internet attacks. He remained in custody last night.
Police believe he is connected to the notorious hacking groups Anonymous and LulzSec which have been blamed for a string of attacks on organisations including the CIA, the US Senate and the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).
The teenager, who was held under the Computer Misuse Act, reportedly goes by the online user-name Tflow.
To our knowledge, tFlow is one of the high ranking members of LulzSec. So was the report true that tFlow was arrested? That apparently remains unconfirmed.
We spoke to Anonymous about this.
“a 16-year-old boy in South London was arrested who they thought was tflow,” someone from Anonymous told ZeroPaid, “and he was released on bail with no charges, and has to go back for additional questioning in August – it’s stupid of whoever that is to confirm it was the real tflow”
This wouldn’t be the first time the media thought a high ranking hacking member was arrested. Previously, when media reports that an arrest was made in the UK, media reports initially suggested that it was LulzSec’s leader Sabu was the one that was arrested. The reports in question turned out to be false and it was merely someone who ran an IRC server – not necessarily someone who was heavily involved in the hacking activities within Anonymous. So, major media outlets have been known to get these types of stories wrong before. The truth is, no one really knows who was arrested in this incident. Yes, someone was arrested. Yes, he probably is facing extradition to the United States. Yes, it’s because of suspicion of him being connected with Anonymous. Unfortunately, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that the person in question is tFlow.
If more information surfaces about the arrested individual, we will be happy to report on it, but at this time, the report that it was really tFlow that was arrested simply cannot be confirmed at this time.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
