BRITISH POLICE have arrested a suspected computer hacker in connection with a slew of online security breaches, including attacks on the websites of the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) and the CIA.
The 19-year-old man was arrested in Wickford, 30 miles east of London, on Monday night, as part of a joint operation with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, Scotland Yard said.
“The arrest follows an investigation into network intrusions and distributed denial of service attacks against a number of international business and intelligence agencies by what is believed to be the same hacking group,” the police said.
The arrest came after a DDoS attack forced Soca to take down its website on Monday. Such attacks cripple websites by overloading them with traffic, and have been compared by hackers to peaceful “sit-in” protests.
Responsibility for the breach was claimed by LulzSec, a hacker group that called DDoS its “least powerful and most abundant ammunition”. The group was formed after a split in the group Anonymous, which last year attacked organisations that co-operated with a US crackdown on WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing website. Other attacks claimed by LulzSec include those on the CIA public website and Sony servers.
All three attacks are being investigated as part of the operation that led to the arrest, a Scotland Yard spokesman said.
Security experts assisting the FBI identified the suspect as Ryan Cleary, whose details were published last month on an Anonymous-run site. A post on the group’s blog accused Mr Cleary of organising a “coup d’état” against Anonymous, in protest against its “leaderless command structure”.
LulzSec said this week that the two organisations had joined forces for a new campaign, Antisec, which would steal and leak information from governments, banks, and “other high-ranking establishments”.
Yesterday LulzSec mocked the idea that Mr Cleary was the organisation’s “mastermind”.
“Seems the glorious leader of LulzSec got arrested, it’s all over now . . . wait . . . we’re all still here!” it wrote on Twitter.
The security researchers admitted that Mr Cleary’s role in LulzSec was unclear.
Graham Cluley, a technology consultant at computer security group Sophos, said that LulzSec had been “playing a dangerous game”.
“Their Twitter account, which has more than 220,000 followers, has become increasingly vocal,” he said. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011