Five alleged computer hackers in Britain, Ireland and the United States were charged Tuesday in high-profile cyberattacks after a leader of the group became an FBI informant.

The charges against alleged members of Anonymous, Lulz Security and other international hacking groups were unveiled in indictments unsealed by the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The indictments cover some of the most notorious hacking incidents of the past several years including those against Sony Pictures Entertainment, private intelligence firm Stratfor and computer security firm HBGary.

The defendants were also accused of involvement in attacks on videogame maker Bethesda Softworks, the Irish political party Fine Gael, the Fox Broadcasting Company and the Public Broadcasting Service.

The five charged were Britons Ryan Ackroyd, 23, of Doncaster, and Jake Davis, 29, of Lerwick, Shetland Islands; Darren Martyn, 25, of Galway, Ireland; Donncha O'Cearrbhail, 19, of Birr, Ireland; and Jeremy Hammond, 27, of Chicago.

The US authorities also revealed that Hector Xavier Monsegur, 28, of New York, who was known by the screen name "Sabu," had pleaded guilty to a series of computer hacking crimes which could land him in prison for 124 years.

US law enforcement officials declined to confirm that Monsegur, a leader of Anonymous offshoot Lulz Security, or LulzSec, had been cooperating with the US authorities but Fox News said he has been secretly working with the FBI for months.

According to court papers released Tuesday, Monsegur pleaded guilty in August to 12 hacking-related charges and admitted involvement in attacks by Anonymous on the websites of MasterCard, PayPal and Visa and the Algerian, Tunisian, Yemeni and Zimbabwean governments.

Ackroyd, who went by the screen name "kayla," and Davis, known as "topiary," were both arrested last year in Britain. They each face two counts of computer hacking conspiracy, which carry a maximum total sentence of 20 years in prison.

Ackroyd and an unidentified 17-year-old male were also charged in Britain on Tuesday with two counts of computer hacking conspiracy, according to a Scotland Yard statement.

Ackroyd will appear at London's Westminster Magistrates' Court on March 16 while the 17-year-old will appear at West London Youth Court on March 13.

Martyn, whose screen name was "pwnsauce," also faces two counts of computer hacking conspiracy while O'Cearrbhail, known online as "palladium," faces one count of computer hacking conspiracy and another of disclosing an unlawfully intercepted phone call which could send him to prison for five years.

O'Cearrbhail was specifically charged with accessing, secretly recording and publicly releasing a recording of a January 17 conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard discussing operations against Anonymous.

According to the court papers, O'Cearrbhail found out about the phone call and how to access it by hacking into the personal email account of an officer with Ireland's national police, the An Garda Siochana, or Garda.

Hammond faces one count of computer hacking conspiracy, one count of computer hacking, and one count of conspiracy to commit access device fraud. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 10 years behind bars.

Hammond, who went by the screen name "Anarchaos," was accused of hacking into the computer network of Stratfor in December 2011, stealing credit card information about 60,000 users, account information about 860,000 Stratfor subscribers or clients and emails from the Texas-based firm.

The Stratfor emails were later turned over to WikiLeaks, which began publishing them last month, and the credit card information was used to make $700,000 in unauthorized purchases, according to the indictment.

Members of Anonymous downplayed the charges on Tuesday, saying on Twitter feed @anonops that "LulzSec was a group, but Anonymous is a movement. Groups come and go, ideas remain."

"Anonymous is a hydra, cut off one head and we grow two back," the group said on another Twitter feed, @YourAnonNews.

List of targets of arrested computer hackers
New York (AFP) March 6, 2012 - The five computer hackers charged in New York on Tuesday and a sixth who pleaded guilty are accused of involvement in some of the most notorious hacking incidents of the past 18 months.

The following are some of the cyberattacks in which the two Britons, two Irishmen and two Americans allegedly played a role as members of Anonymous, Lulz Security or associated groups:

-- December 2010: Operation Payback. Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks by members of Anonymous on the websites of MasterCard, PayPal and Visa in retaliation for their refusal to accept donations for WikiLeaks. In a DDoS attack, a website is bombarded with traffic, slowing it down or knocking it offline completely.

-- January 2011: Defacing a website of the Irish political party Fine Gael after accessing computer servers in Arizona used to maintain the website, www.finegael2011.com.

-- January 2011: Operation Tunisia. DDoS attacks by members of Anonymous on Tunisian government computer systems, including defacing the prime minister's website.

-- Early 2011: Operation Algeria. DDoS attacks by members of Anonymous on Algerian government websites and cyber attacks on government computer systems.

-- Early 2011: Operation Yemen. Cyberattacks by members of Anonymous on Yemeni government computer systems and unauthorized downloads of "certain information."

-- Early 2011: Operation Zimbabwe. Cyberattacks by members of Anonymous on Zimbabwean government computer systems and an attempt to steal information from a Zimbabwean government email server.

-- Early 2011: A cyberattack on computer systems of the Tribune Company, which owns the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, using misappropriated login credentials.

-- February 2011: A cyberattack on private computer security firm HBGary that involved the theft of 60,000 emails from HBGary employees and the HBGary chief executive, as well as defacing his Twitter account.

-- April-May 2011: A cyberattack on a Fox Broadcasting Company website that involved the theft of names, dates of birth, telephone numbers, email and residential addresses for more than 70,000 potential contestants on the Fox television show the "X-Factor."

-- May 2011: A cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment that revealed the passwords, email addresses, home addresses and dates of birth of 100,000 users of the www.sonypictures.com website and a subsequent online attack against Sony Music Entertainment.

-- May 2011: A cyberattack on the Public Broadcasting System website in retaliation for coverage of WikiLeaks on the PBS program "Frontline." The website of the PBS news program "NewsHour" was defaced and confidential information was stolen.

-- June 2011: A cyberattack on Infragard-Atlanta, an information-sharing partnership between the FBI and private industry, involving the theft of passwords and other information, and another against Unveillance, which involved downloading emails of the Unveillance chief executive.

-- June 2011: A cyberattack on the US Senate's website. Internal directory data was stolen from Senate.gov but no sensitive information was compromised.

-- June 2011: A cyberattack on videogame maker Bethesda Softworks and the theft of usernames, passwords and email accounts for 200,000 users of Bethesda Softwork's www.brinkthegame.com.

-- December 2011: An attack on the computer systems of private intelligence firm Stratfor that involved the theft of credit card information for 60,000 users, account information about 860,000 Stratfor subscribers or clients and emails from the Texas-based firm. Only one of the defendants, Jeremy Hammond, 27, of Chicago, was charged in connection with the Stratfor hack.