Lauri Love, a Briton well known in the Occupy activist community, is facing yet another charge alleging that he hacked into the online system of a major American government institution.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation unsealed an eight-page indictment on Thursday accusing Love of illegally accessing the servers of the Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank. The complaint alleges Love stole personal data about users of the system and later posted those names, addresses and other pieces of information online.
Love, 28, made headlines in October when he was arrested in his native England on charges that he illegally accessed servers of several U.S. systems including the U.S. military, NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency.
The complaints filed in those charges are similar to the accusations that the FBI levied against Love on Thursday.
The FBI accused Love of being a "sophisticated and prolific computer hacker" who chatted with other hackers online about finding servers that were running on a particular software program that they knew was vulnerable to an attack.
In October 2012, the complaint states, Love figured out that some of the Fed's servers used this particular program. From there, Love allegedly injected malicious code into the program and stole information from the Fed including names, email addresses and phone numbers and other information about Fed employees.
The FBI alleges Love gained access to the online systems of several branches of the Fed, including one in New York, from about October 2012 to February 2013.
Love is charged with one count of computer hacking, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, and one count of aggravated identity theft, which could add up to two years of jail time.
Love — also allegedly known by online alter egos including "nsh," "peace," "shift, "route" and "Smedley Butler" — has received support from activist communities. He reportedly led a protest at Scotland's Glasgow University while he was a student there, and was active in Scotland's Occupy protests in 2011.
