Lulzsec, the hacker group that has been responsible for various attacks on Sony, Nintendo, Bethesda, as well as effectively shutting down game services such as Minecraft and League of Legends, has broken up.

This announcement apparently was found in a torrent file, which had a note detailing the disbanding, along with a beta program for Battlefield Heroes and internal data from AT&T and AOL. The note explained that the group had only six people as its members, and that they had set a timeframe of 50 days where they would operate under.

During their 50 day run, the hacker group gained an increasingly long list of adversaries. Their first hacking job was against Fox News for their verbal attacks on rapper Common, after he was invited to the White House. The group would later perform their infamous hack on Sony in response for their controversial legal action against George Hotz, which caused PSN services to be shut down for a whole month. In the days to follow, their attack patterns seemed to have had less to do with promoting stronger online security and any political agendas the group may have had, and more about simply trying to piss off as many people as possible.

Before the group formally announced their disbanding, they claimed to have no affiliation with 19 year old Ryan Cleary, who was arrested for various denial-of-service attacks on British government agencies. Despite claims by press to the contrary, Lulzsec openly stated that the teenager wasn’t part of their group.

As of this writing, no one knows what the members of Lulzsec plan to do at this point. Considering that they now have law enforcement on their tails, as well as rival hackers, they may take the opportunity to go into hiding until the smoke clears. It’s also likely that they may fall back under the guise of Anonymous for protection. Whatever the case, it's unlikely that this is the last we'll hear of them.

[via gameindustry.biz]