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Posted 1/17/2015, 12:11 am
Xbox And Sony Cyberattacks: Teen Arrested
The 18-year-old has also been detained as part of a British and FBI operation over alleged threats to kill.
British police said on Friday they had arrested a man in northwest England following the
2014 cyber attacks on Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox systems. Both systems suffered
long outages over Christmas after a major distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack. A
hacking group calling itself Lizard Squad, which had attacked the two networks earlier last year
, claimed responsibility.
A DDoS attack is a method to overload a server with requests and eventually make its
network or machine unavailable for its users. In fact, Lizard Squad soon started selling
its distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack tool.
“Officers … have arrested a man in Southport, Merseyside this morning as part of an
investigation into ‘swatting’ and computer hacking offences,” Merseyside police said in a statement.
The officers had worked closely with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the
operation, it added.
No further details of the arrest were immediately available.
Swatting is a term used to describe criminal activity by an individual or group who provide
false information to law enforcement agencies in the United States, suggesting that a
threat exists at a particular location so that police respond with tactical units.
A report on Serocu.org.uk states, “An 18-year-old man was arrested this morning (16/1) in
Boundary Street, Southport on suspicion of unauthorised access to computer material
contrary to section 1 of Computer Misuse Act 1990, unauthorised access with intent to
commit further offences contrary to section 2 of Computer Misuse Act 1990 and threats to
kill contrary to Section 16 of Offences against the person Act 1861.”
2014 cyber attacks on Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox systems. Both systems suffered
long outages over Christmas after a major distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack. A
hacking group calling itself Lizard Squad, which had attacked the two networks earlier last year
, claimed responsibility.
A DDoS attack is a method to overload a server with requests and eventually make its
network or machine unavailable for its users. In fact, Lizard Squad soon started selling
its distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack tool.
“Officers … have arrested a man in Southport, Merseyside this morning as part of an
investigation into ‘swatting’ and computer hacking offences,” Merseyside police said in a statement.
The officers had worked closely with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the
operation, it added.
No further details of the arrest were immediately available.
Swatting is a term used to describe criminal activity by an individual or group who provide
false information to law enforcement agencies in the United States, suggesting that a
threat exists at a particular location so that police respond with tactical units.
A report on Serocu.org.uk states, “An 18-year-old man was arrested this morning (16/1) in
Boundary Street, Southport on suspicion of unauthorised access to computer material
contrary to section 1 of Computer Misuse Act 1990, unauthorised access with intent to
commit further offences contrary to section 2 of Computer Misuse Act 1990 and threats to
kill contrary to Section 16 of Offences against the person Act 1861.”
