The website of the notorious hacking collective LulzSec was temporarily crippled on Friday morning after an apparent retribution attack by an ex-military hacker.

The lone-wolf operator, known as the Jester, claimed appeared to claim to have downed the LulzSec website "for the lulz" and expose its shadowy leader in a Twitter message on Friday. The main LulzSec website was down for a short time on Friday morning but resurfaced shortly after.

Update: The Jester says he "did not engage" the LulzSec website, pointing to another lone-wolf hacker, Oneiroi. See earlier update at foot of post.

The Jester, notorious in the online hacking community, has waged a long-running battle with senior members of Anonymous and its splinter group LulzSec.

Significantly, the Jester also posted what appears to be an attempt to out the founder and leader of LulzSec, a long-term hacker known as Sabu. The investigation pieces together a trail of information gathered from public and private social networks and concludes the following:

Name(s): Xavier Kaotico, Xavier de Leon Email: [redacted by the Guardian] Age: 30 as of 2011-06-21 Location: Possibly New York City, NY (has lived there) Websites: sabu.net, pure-elite.org, confinement.org Profession: Independent IT consultant Interests: Python programming, Linux, network security, exploit development



Attempts to name-and-shame each other has become a feature of the online hacking community.

The Jester is one of the most closely-guarded activists, with numerous attempts to reveal his real-life identity by Anonymous members apparently falling short. Most have a number of online sobriquets which change hands almost as often as they change targets.

Overnight, LulzSec claimed to have hacked into the website and database of the Arizona Department of Public Safety and released a tranche of allegedly confidential information.

The group also denied claims it was behind an attack on servers used by the Sun:

Clearing up yet more failed attempts at framing: we didn't attack The Sun or The Times in any way with any kind of DDoS attack. Cheers. The Lulz Boat

LulzSec



Update: Another lone-wolf hacker, Oneiroi, is claiming credit for crippling LulzSec's website. Writing on his blog, Oneiroi says: "I'm afraid I'm unable to post a mission statement at this time. I'd like to let the public know that phase one of OPERATION SUPERNOVA has been successful. Lulzsecurity.com is Tango down at this time. The attack will stop by Midnight PST. Also, Cloudflare is not my target. Please don't argue that lulzsec is up. Cloudflare creates a backup of the website. It's doing its job. I want to make it bloody clear that Cloudflare isn't my target."