Topiary (also known as Gardenslayer[1]) is a hacktivist and self-described "Simple prankster turned swank garden hedge. Worked with Anonymous, LulzSec, and other such paragons of intense cyber victory."[2] He is heavily involved with the Internet group Anonymous, which have publicly claimed various online attacks, including hacking HBGary,[3] Westboro Baptist Church, and Gawker.[4] They have also claimed responsibility for the defacing of government websites in countries such as Zimbabwe,[5] Syria, [6] Tunisia,[7] Ireland[8] and Egypt.[9]
On February 24, 2011, Topiary gained attention after he appeared on The David Pakman Show. He informed the host that Anonymous had replaced a Westboro Baptist Church webpage with a message from Anonymous during an on-air confrontation with Shirley Phelps-Roper.[10] A recording of this event was placed on YouTube,[11] where it reached over one million views in five days.
Topiary is a reported member of LulzSec, and supposedly ran their Twitter account.[12] There was originally speculation that the identity of Topiary was Daniel Chatfield after the domain lulzsecurity.co.uk allegedly redirected to lulzsecurity.com. This speculation led to the rebuttal by LulzSec's leader, Sabu,[13] publicly stating on twitter that Daniel Chatfield was not Topiary.[14] The Guardian had reported that Topiary's name was Daniel.[13]
An 18-year old man suspected of being Topiary was arrested in the Shetland Islands on July 27 2011.[15] On July 31, 2011, the man was charged with five offences including unauthorised computer access and conspiracy to carry out a distributed denial of service attack on the Serious Organised Crime Agency's website.[16] Scotland Yard later identified the man arrested as Yell, Shetland resident Jake Davis. He was charged with unauthorized access of a computer under the Computer Misuse Act 1990, encouraging or assisting criminal activity under the Serious Crime Act 2007, conspiracy to launch a denial-of-service attack against the Serious Organised Crime Unit contrary to the Criminal Law Act 1977, and criminal conspiracy also under the Criminal Law Act 1977.[17]
Police confiscated a Dell laptop and a 100-gigabyte hard drive that had 16 different virtual machines. The hard drive also contained details relating to an attack on Sony and hundreds of thousands of email addresses and passwords were found on the computer.[18] A London court released Davis on bail under the conditions that he live under curfew with his mother and have no access to the Internet. His lawyer Gideon Cammerman stated that, while his client did help publicize LulzSec and Anonymous attacks, he lacks the technical skills to have been anything but a sympathizer.[18]
After his arrest, Anonymous launched a 'Free Topiary' campaign,[19] which includes adding a "Free Topiary" banner to their Twitter avatars, similar to the Free Bradley banner.
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