14 DAY TRIAL // Known in his online crusades as Sabu, former leader of the LulzSec hacker group Hector Xavier Monsegur talks in his first TV interview about his arrest by the FBI in mid-2011.
The operation was nothing unexpected, like in the case of political activist and hacker Jeremy Hammond (“Anarchaos”), captured in 2012 for breaking the computer systems of security intelligence company Stratfor as a result of Monsegur’s cooperation with the FBI.
FBI's monitoring was conspicuous
Monsegur had noticed unusual activity around his apartment building in New York weeks before the authorities came knocking at his door; but it was already too late for him to try to escape, especially when two kids depended on him.
The day Monsegur got arrested, he took the kids to school and when he returned home, he noticed people and cars he had never seen before around the block. At one moment, when he made eye contact with a strange individual who was peeking at him from behind a newspaper, the person started to act all nervous.
“One of the guys was looking at me as I was walking by, reading his newspaper, and he’s peeking at me…when I look at him he completely gets lost, drops his newspaper and starts fidgeting around the car,” Monsegur told Charlie Rose in a CBS interview (available below).
At that moment, the hacker knew that something was happening and began to prepare for his last day with the family. After taking the kids from school, he went on a $200 / €160 “shopping spree”, buying them toys and coloring books.
When he got home, Monsegur shared his insight with his brother and instructed him to stay calm, say nothing and not move, in order to avoid any reaction from the police.
The arrest was a quite one
At about eight or nine in the evening, someone knocked at the door saying it was the police. Before opening the door, Monsegur said “All right guys, hold on a moment,” buying some time to tell his brother once more to relax and not to worry.
“We’re glad you opened the door in time, ‘cause we were about to smash it in,” an agent said after Monsegur opened the door. The reply from the hacker was “What’s the problem?”
The ensuing explanation from the FBI convinced Monsegur that they already knew about his activities and his weakness for the two children, and that his only alternative was to go quietly with them.
The general details of what happened in the next three years are no longer a secret, as Sabu started helping the FBI to catch the other members of Anonymous and LulzSec, as well as prevent attacks against the government.
The specific details are unknown, but CBS reports that more than 300 cyber-attacks targeting military-controlled systems and NASA were intercepted with the help of the hacker.
