An indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles accuses Cody Kretsinger, 23, of conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer.

He appeared before a federal magistrate in Phoenix on Thursday afternoon and was released without bail.

Efforts to reach Kretsinger were unsuccessful.

According to the indictment, Kretsinger is a member of an elite collective of hackers called Lulz Security, or LulzSec, a group that has claimed responsibility for launching a cyberattack on Sony Pictures in late May and early June.

LulzSec posted private information on tens of thousands of Sony customers, including their usernames, passwords, e-mail addresses and phone numbers, on the hacker group’s website.

Officials believe that Kretsinger went by the moniker “recursion” and used a proxy server to hide his Internet Protocol address. He was able to exploit Sony Pictures’ database by giving its input system an overloading series of commands, according to the Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephanie Christensen.

After the attack on Sony Pictures, Kretsinger permanently erased the hard drive of his computer to avoid detection by law enforcement, according to the indictment.

In June, LulzSec took responsibility for hacking into the Arizona Department of Public Safety’s computers and releasing hundreds of law-enforcement files. It said the attack was retaliation for SB 1070, an Arizona law designed to crack down on illegal immigration.

The files, which were placed on LulzSec’s website, included personal information about law-enforcement officers and numerous documents ranging from routine alerts from out-of-state police agencies to videos and photos about the hazards of police work and the operations of drug gangs.

LulzSec has also claimed to have breached the websites of the CIA and the U.S. Senate.

Kretsinger is originally from Decatur, Ill. He moved to Arizona in August 2010 to pursue the University of Advancing Technology’s network-security curriculum, according to a UAT newsletter from July.

In the same newsletter, he was named UAT’s Student of the Month.

He said in the newsletter that his dream was to work for the Department of Defense or the National Security Agency.

“While I wouldn’t mind being a penetration tester, I think it’s a lot more fun to try to build and secure a network and its devices from the ground up.” Kretsinger said.

Kretsinger could face 15 years in prison if convicted.

The Electronic Crimes Task Force in Los Angeles, which includes the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department, conducted the investigation.