Second Hacker Charged With Sony Pictures Data Breach

Prosecutors have charged Raynaldo Rivera with participating in the hacking of Sony Pictures' website last year.

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The FBI arrested Rivera in Phoenix. According to an indictment that was unsealed this week, he was a member of LulzSec, the group that took credit for attaining the passwords and personal information of more than 1 million Sony website users in late May 2011.

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Rivera is the second person to be charged with participating in the hacking conspiracy. Cody Kretsinger was arrested in September and pled guilty in April.

Rivera, 20, is alleged to be an accomplice who ran by the nicknames "neuron," "royal" and "wildicv." Together, the LulzSec group is said to have executed an SQL-injection attack on Sony computers.

At the time of the attack, LulzSec put out a statement that admitted to compromising user personal information, including passwords, e-mail addresses, home addresses and more. "What's worse is that every bit of data we took wasn't encrypted," the group said. "Sony stored over 1,000,000 passwords of its customers in plaintext, which means it's just a matter of taking it. This is disgraceful and insecure: they were asking for it."

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The computer attack is reported to have cost Sony $600,000 in damage; the company also has faced much greater damages from a class-action lawsuit that followed, which triggered a dispute with its insurers.

Rivera faces charges that could bring 15 years in prison.

E-mail: eriq.gardner@thr.com; Twitter: @eriqgardner