Deric Lostutter was indicted on Thursday under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the infamous anti-hacking statute that goes back to the 1980s. It all started in 2012 after The New York Times published an incident of a ghastly rape against a teenage girl in Steubenville, Ohio late that year. That’s when an online vigilante campaign was started, which was headed by someone who called himself “KYAnonymous.” The campaign targeted local officials whom the vigilantes felt weren’t acting on the rape investigation seriously apparently because the criminals were high school football players. In December 2012, a website dedicated to Steubenville sports (warning: auto-playing sound!) was hacked, which displayed a video of a man in a Guy Fawkes mask. The masked man, whom Rolling Stone recognized as Lostutter, threatened to release personal information of the involved Steubenville football players unless they asked forgiveness from the rape victim by January 1, 2013. Two teenage boys ended up being accused, and when the case went to trial in March 2013, the two were found guilty of rape and imprisoned for one to two years. Lostutter exiled himself as “KYAnonymous” in early June 2013, and gave a written account of an April 2013 FBI search on his property in Winchester, Kentucky. The search marked the latest in a string of instances where members of Anonymous and Anonymous-linked parties have been unmasked, pled guilty, or else been caught for their actions online. Most recently, California journalist Matthew Keys was charged and sentenced earlier this year under the CFAA of passing along a login in an Anonymous chatroom that ultimately resulted in a Los Angeles Times article being vandalized for 40 minutes. While Keys has been sentenced to 24 months in prison, he has appealed both the conviction and the sentence. Lostutter in the past media interviews has refused to accept that he hacked the Stubenville sports site. According to his own account on ProjectKnightSec.com, Lostutter recognized a man named “Noah McHugh” (also known as @justbatcat) as the actual hacker. The new federal charges references @justbatcat as a co-conspirator but does not name him. That Twitter account for the last three years has not been active. In a Thursday evening tweet, Lostutter directed media inquiries to his attorney, Tor Ekeland, who also represented Keys. https://twitter.com/DericLostutter/status/751229838262935553 Ekeland has yet to comment on the issue. Also, it is not clear as to why it took more than three years for Lostutter’s charges to be filed. Source: Ars Technica
