Jake Leslie Davis (born 27 October 1992), known professionally as Topiary, is a British

hacktivist Hacktivism (or hactivism; a portmanteau of '' hack'' and ''activism''), is the use of computer-based techniques such as hacking as a form of civil disobedience to promote a political agenda or social change. A form of Internet activism with roo ...

. He has worked with

Anonymous Anonymous may refer to: * Anonymity, the state of an individual's identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown ** Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an unnamed or unknown creator or author * Anonym ...

LulzSec LulzSec (a contraction for Lulz Security) is a Grey hat, grey hat computer hacking group that claimed responsibility for several high profile attacks, including the 2011 PlayStation Network outage, compromise of user accounts from PlayStation N ...

, and other similar groups. He was an associate of the Internet group

, which has publicly claimed various online attacks, including hacking

HBGary HBGary is a subsidiary company of ManTech International, focused on technology security. In the past, two distinct but affiliated firms had carried the HBGary name: ''HBGary Federal'', which sold its products to the US Government, and ''HBGary, ...

Westboro Baptist Church The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is an American unaffiliated Primitive Baptists, Primitive Baptist church in Topeka, Kansas, that was founded in 1955 by pastor Fred Phelps. It is widely considered a hate group and a cult, and is known for Prot ...

, and

Gawker ''Gawker'' was an American blog founded by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers that was based in New York City and focused on celebrities and the media industry. According to SimilarWeb, the site had over 23 million visits per month in 2015. Fo ...

. They have also claimed responsibility for the defacing of government websites in countries such as

Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

Tunisia Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares m ...

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

, and

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

. After serving his time and staying off the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

for two years, Jake Davis is now a security researcher, disclosing bugs to corporations as a part of their bounty programs.

Anonymous

Davis was a member of hacker collective

, where he was involved in the attack on

in response to Aaron Barr, then CEO of the organization, claiming to have unmasked various members of Anonymous. The stolen HBGary emails were published and the small team who had been responsible splintered from Anonymous calling itself LulzSec.

LulzSec

On 24 February 2011, Topiary gained attention after he appeared on ''

The David Pakman Show ''The David Pakman Show'' ''(TDPS)'', originally ''Midweek Politics with David Pakman'', is a progressive news talk show currently airing on television, radio, and the Internet, hosted by David Pakman. The program first aired in August 2005 o ...

''. He informed the host that Anonymous had replaced a Westboro Baptist Church webpage with a message from Anonymous during an on-air confrontation with Shirley Phelps-Roper. A recording of this event was placed on

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

, where it reached over one million views in five days. Topiary was a member of

, and ran their

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

account. ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' made a claim in a report that Topiary's name was Daniel. On 14 July 2011, ''The Guardian'' published an exclusive interview with Topiary, in which he spoke extensively about his motivations. Describing himself as "an internet denizen with a passion for change" he said he feared being tracked by the authorities: "I can only hope that they haven't pinned any of us, especially my friends from LulzSec." Later, a full transcript of the lengthy interview surfaced on the website of freelance ''Guardian'' journalist Ryan Gallagher.

Arrest

An 18-year-old man suspected of being Topiary was arrested in the

Shetland Shetland (until 1975 spelled Zetland), also called the Shetland Islands, is an archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands, and Norway, marking the northernmost region of the United Kingdom. The islands lie about to the ...

islands of Scotland on 27 July 2011. On 31 July 2011, the man was charged with five offences including unauthorised computer access and conspiracy to carry out a

distributed denial of service attack In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyberattack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host conne ...

on the

Serious Organised Crime Agency The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) was a non-departmental public body of the Government of the United Kingdom which existed from 1 April 2006 until 7 October 2013. SOCA was a national law enforcement agency with Home Office sponsorship, e ...

's website.

Scotland Yard Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's London boroughs, 32 boroughs. Its name derives from the location of the original ...

later identified the man arrested as Jake Davis, a resident of the island of Yell. He was charged with unauthorised access of a computer under the

Computer Misuse Act 1990 The Computer Misuse Act 1990 (c. 18) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, introduced partly in response to the decision in ''R v Gold & Schifreen'' (1988) 1 AC 1063. Critics of the bill complained that it was introduced hastily, w ...

, encouraging or assisting criminal activity under the

Serious Crime Act 2007 The Serious Crime Act 2007 (c. 27) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that makes several radical changes to English criminal law. In particular, it creates a new scheme of serious crime prevention orders to frustrate crime in En ...

, conspiracy to launch a denial-of-service attack against the Serious Organised Crime Unit contrary to the

Criminal Law Act 1977 The Criminal Law Act 1977 (c. 45) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Most of it only applies to England and Wales. It creates the offence of conspiracy in English law. It also created offences concerned with criminal trespass i ...

, and

criminal conspiracy In criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more people to commit a crime at some time in the future. Criminal law in some countries or for some conspiracies may require that at least one overt act be undertaken in furtherance ...

also under the Criminal Law Act 1977. Police confiscated a

Dell Dell Inc. is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports personal computers (PCs), Server (computing), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals including printers and webcam ...

laptop and a 100-gigabyte hard drive that had 16 different

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulator, emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve ...

s. The hard drive also contained details relating to an attack on Sony and hundreds of thousands of email addresses and passwords. A London court released Davis on bail under the conditions that he live under curfew with his mother and have no access to the Internet. His lawyer Gideon Cammerman stated that, while his client did help publicise LulzSec and Anonymous attacks, he lacked the technical skills to have been anything but a sympathiser. After his arrest, Anonymous launched a 'Free Topiary' campaign, which included adding a "Free Topiary" banner to their Twitter avatars, similar to the

Free Bradley Chelsea Elizabeth Manning (born Bradley Edward Manning, December 17, 1987) is an American activist and whistleblower. She is a former United States Army soldier who was convicted by court-martial in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act ...

banner.

Guilty plea

Davis pleaded guilty on 25 June 2012 to DDoS attacks on several websites, but pleaded not guilty to two counts of encouraging others to commit computer offenses and fraud. Davis was due to be tried along with Ryan Cleary (Ryan), Ryan Ackroyd (Kayla), Mustafa Al-Bassam (tflow), beginning 8 April 2013. The court was informed it would take 3,000 hours to view the material against Ackroyd alone. They were released on bail, except for Cleary. Davis was not tried for a number of other crimes perpetrated by LulzSec.

Court appearance

On 8 April 2013, Davis again appeared in court with fellow hackers, Ryan Ackroyd, Ryan Cleary and Mustafa Al-Bassam. All four pleaded guilty to computer crimes and were sentenced on 14 May 2013. Davis faced a maximum of 10 years in prison but got 24 months in a young offenders institute. He served 38 days because he had been

electronically tagged Electronic tagging is a form of surveillance that uses an electronic device affixed to a person. In some jurisdictions, an electronic tag fitted above the ankle is used for people as part of their bail or probation conditions. It is also used in ...

for 21 months and this counted against his sentence.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Topiary Living people People from Yell, Shetland British cybercriminals Anonymous (hacker group) activists 1992 births Hacktivists