The "digital delinquents" that hacked into Sony PlayStation, the U.S. Senate, PBS and the Spanish government are igniting outrage worldwide. But such anarchy online is going to get much worse before it improves, so we'd better get used to it, warns Robert X. Cringely.

In one day, the hacking "miscreants" known as LulzSec--a.k.a. Lulz Security or Lulz Boat--brought down a gaming network, magazine and security company, Cringely notes in a post at InfoWorld. He theorizes that LulzSec spun off from Anonymous because the massive hacktivist non-organization wasn't seen as sufficiently anarchist. Anonymous isn't your "average script kiddies," he writes, quoting from one of its recent manifestos: "We do not wish to dictate anything to anybody. We do not wish to terrorize any nation. We merely wish to remove power from vested interests and return it to the people--who, in a democracy, it should never have been taken from in the first place."

LulzSec, in contrast, appears to be bent on making trouble for trouble's sake: "I wouldn't be surprised if most of them were still living in mom and dad's basement, talking about how awesome it is to be getting all this attention. To them, hanging out with the Anons was like having Dad come along when you go out to egg houses and leave graffiti in the middle of the night: a total drag," Cringely writes.

The worst news is that there are likely to be boatloads of similar spinoffs from Anonymous, "digital delinquents with mad hacking skillz and absolutely no adult supervision," he writes. "Call it a hacking bubble. No one will be safe." The best thing to do, Cringely advises, is secure your network as best you can and then hope the delinquents go after someone else.

It isn't clear how LulzSec and other digital trouble makers will be conquered, but security experts have some insights on how they've managed to cause such havoc so far. InformationWeek's Mathew J. Schwartz shed light on their methods and the conditions for their success.

For more:
- see Robert X. Cringely's column at InfoWorld
- see Mathew J. Schwartz's article at InformationWeek

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