2011
According to a (admittedly very damning) post by infinitysnake, the LB drama began long before Lulzsec (at the time known as gn0sis), but that’s where we’ll start for now. You can see my analysis of the two responses a later on, or you can skip to the next chapter if you wish.
LB starts out as a journalist for crowdleaks, and found herself hanging out in Lulzsec’s #hq irc channel, getting “exclusive access to their operations” so that she can write better reports. She was able to do this through her friendship with kayla, one of the existing members of the group. Lulzsec was a “hacktivist” collective back in the early-ish 00’s that tended to be a bit of a loose cannon sect. More on that in a bit.
A brief bit of background: stuxnet is a worm that was first used to target Iranian nuke facilities. It’s meant to target infrastructure computing systems as a political tool. A corp called HBGary allegedly had involvement with its creation/development. HBGary obviously denies this, but Lulzsec (and most importantly LB) seemed to think so regardless, so of course, Lulzsec decides to hack HBGary over it. None of this is relevent to LB, really, but it gives an idea of the stakes. Bear with me.
There’s a lot of back and forth over what happens next: LB maintains (better formatting here) that she realized Lulzsec was bad bad folks and decided to go vigilante on them, but was just caught up and taken advantage of. She explicitly states that infinitysnake fed her a sob story and had approached LB “seem(ing) pretty desperate and afraid for her safety.” LB’s response was to… try to talk Lulzsec out of harassing snake… unsuccessfully. Nice. Infinitysnake, however, states that LB approached her on behalf of Lulzsec in an attempt to “social engineer” her, and that snake played along after consulting with an LE (law enforcement) contact. Infinitysnake claims that she in fact had not actually come to LB with the harassment story, though she states the events LB mentions do align with her previous experiences, as she had been previously harrassed by the group for some time. According to snake, LB incriminated herself sufficiently enough for the FBI to pay her a visit (a fact corroborated by LB herself, and which we will cover momentarily). Additionally, LB sends infinitysnake Lulzsec’s irc chat logs, and snake, under the name backtrace, releases the logs. Because of course she does. OPERATIONAL SECURITY, LB.
Apparently, as shown in the screenshot I keep linking, in between the time of the log leak and the soon-to-be-discussed fbi visit, LB was losing her shit and trying to hunt down innocent bystanders she thought were infinitysnake, even going so far as to pedojacket some doctor in florida and even contacting his neighbors. I do not have first hand sources for this, but LB’s actions following this point speak for themselves, and as far as I’ve seen she has yet to explicitly deny this. I do also have sources for LB later doxxing infinitysnake to Lulzsec, a move That would knowingly put her in harm’s way, given the nature of the groups punitive actions (more on this in the infinitysnake response)
Now, another set of leaked logs show that LB had created a sort of instruction set on how to carry out an Anonymous attack on behalf of the collective. Sabu, the defacto leader & resident asshole of the bunch, did not like this documentation, and sort of lost his shit about it (see link above). While Sabu was a complete jerk here, it again illustrates LB’s complete lack of opsec consideration, which we’ll see more of going forward, and more importantly her willful participation with this group, in spite of the way she tends to talk about them in other contexts. According to infinitysnake, Sabu’s response was LB’s true reasoning for leaking the logs, and though I of course do not have a primary source for this, another set of chat logs (this one) truly make it seem like she had it out for Sabu in particular.
So naturally after all of this the fbi shows up and has some questions for LB, who of course completely complies up to the point where they ask her to be an informant, to which she replies that Lulzsec already hates her for the leaks. Go figure. Allegedly, the visit was remarkably pleasant – almost uncharacteristically so, one might say – especially during a time when the feds were regularly making examples of anyone affiliated with any such hacker groups. I do have a primary source for these reposted logs (a pastebin document made at the time), but if I may be completely honest, it doxes the hell out of LB and, regardless of the rest of the content expressed here, I do not feel that is a just thing to do.
Anyway the snitch chat logs (the ones LB gave to infinitysnake) circulates in a document painting her as a traitor who snitched on her fellow hackers (she was, as stated, not actually a member of Lulzsec). The document doxxed her, and she of course lost her job (“ it made the company look bad” according to LB). I, unfortunately, do not have access to this document, but knowing the way that community operated at the time, the existence of such a doc isn’t exactly a stretch of the imagination. I will update here if I manage to locate it.
Most critically of all, the nature of the FBI visit and LB’s admission to snitching gave people a bad taste in their mouth, and they labelled her a federal informant. Now, by some definitions, this is objectively true: she gave up every single one of the Lulzsec group members and gave an incredible amount of information to the FBI when they came knocking. However, who among us, fearing for our physical safety and already at odds with a group of somewhat potentially dangerous individuals, would do differently? Right?
Well turns out LB was also mentioned in the Julian Assange case as an informant fifteen times – a fact made extra interesting due to her previous involvement with CrowdLeaks, a WikiLeaks-focused news outlet from back in the day. So, there’s that.
2012
The following contains direct links to the reddit discussion between LB & infinitysnake (held after the events enumerated above), as well as my own personal commentary on the material. I recommend viewing the primary sources for yourselves, and formulate your own opinions before proceeding to my thoughts, if you still wish to by that point. You may also skip to chapter 3), I just felt this added some additional context.
I wasn’t planning on taking notes on this but I think a few excerpts deserve special attention. For context, LB is big mad about backtrace (who she at this time does not know is infinitysnake) leaking the Lulzsec logs, and wants revenge.
Number One: LB states: “Jen had also told me that she had seen some proof that this person was a pedophile. Now i really hate pedophiles, with a passion. The why I will not go into but I hate them for good
cause. So from my view I was trying to expose this person for being a pedophile. So I gathered all of this info and handed it over to kayla as she was the one who was most angry with me over the logs being leaked, my hope
was to show her that what had happened was not entirely intentional.”
Jen, here, is infinitysnake. Leaving aside the she-said-she-said of who first brought the accusation to light, given that infinitysnake has firmly stated that she did not in fact make any claims of pedophilia, this is really
weird grandstanding – a frequent tool of LB’s to defer responsibility – and her response is to TO DOX THE PERSON WHO SHE BELIEVED PUBLISHED THE CHAT LOGS, AND DELIVER THIS INFORMATION, FRAMING THEM AS A PEDOPHILE WITH NO
SUBSTANTIAL EVIDENCE, TO A HACKER ORGANIZATION. What the FUCK dude. Regardless of Jen’s alleged role here, LB should NEVER have just taken “yeah idk I saw some proof, just trust me” as hard enough evidence to RUIN THE LIFE
OF AN UNAFFILIATED PERSON, as we’ve already seen that backtrace was NOT the doctor in florida at all.
Number Two: The admittal in question, where infinitysnake says she knew Sabu was an informant, is sort of a moot point. It’s obvious she was trying to take down Lulzsec, which from what I’ve seen so far seems like a reasonable goal, I mean they literally were doing this for “the lulz”, were stealing people’s personal info, and threw horrid slurs & statements around as casually as asking what’s for dinner, so I don’t know that this is the best backdrop for LB’s argument.
Number Three: “She’s supposedly on the government payroll so she’s wasting government resources trying to spy on a support community.” It’s very interesting to throw the exact same criticisms that have been leveled at you against your opponent. DARVO to all hell, especially when snake’s comments later state that she was only in that irc because someone had tipped her off that LB was doxxing her there.
Now, in infinitysnake’s response, she states that she never said anything to LB about being in distress (though the story of her harassment at the hands of chanology posted in her second comment do at least corroborate the existence of such distress at one time), and in fact she posts a chat log of LB trying to DOX HER DIRECTLY TO LULZSEC, saying “if that bitch is behind this, then i got some friends who might be willing to help” and then SENDING HER ADDRESS with barely any prompting from topiary. Zero hesitation.
In fact, infinitysnake states that all of her & LB’s communication was logged by law enforcement, and that LB directly said enough to get herself raided, but snake didn’t say more. Infinitysnake goes on in the next comment to express her personal reasons for operating against Lulzsec, and that she did so without compensation.