They are essentially defacers, though instead of (just) defacing they go for a press release / dox drop. Defacers do it for the attention. You'll often see reasoning on defaced websites such as "We did it for the glory of Iran" or "Maybe you should secure your users data better!" as if to suggest a greater purpose for the actions, but when you string together all of their targets the reasoning almost always falls flat.
Lulzsec may have given some people the wrong impression by hitting Sony and thus suggesting that they were activist minded like the AnonOps program they grew out of, but they'd always been honest about the real reason from day one: "we do it for the lulz". The lulz in this case are inexorably intertwined with the attention seeking.
Lulzsec may have given some people the wrong impression by hitting Sony and thus suggesting that they were activist minded like the AnonOps program they grew out of, but they'd always been honest about the real reason from day one: "we do it for the lulz". The lulz in this case are inexorably intertwined with the attention seeking.