Police Score More Arrests In Hunt For Hackers
The Met’s e-Crime unit has bagged two more suspected ‘hacktivists’ and charged a further two
British police made two more arrests yesterday in connection with Lulzsec and Anonymous hacks.
The men, aged 24 and 20, were arrested separately at addresses in Mexborough, Doncaster, South Yorkshire and Warminster, Wiltshire for conspiring to commit offences under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
The arrests are in connection with suspected offences conducted under the cover of the online identity ‘Kayla’. Computer equipment was taken from the Doncaster address for forensic examination.
Joint strike
The Met Police said on its website that the arrests were part of an ongoing operation in collaboration with the FBI and other overseas authorities.
DI Mark Raymond from the PCeU said: “The arrests relate to our enquiries into a series of serious computer intrusions and online denial-of-service attacks recently suffered by a number of multi-national companies, public institutions and government and law enforcement agencies in Great Britain and the United States.
“We are working to detect and bring before the courts those responsible for these offences, to disrupt such groups, and to deter others thinking of participating in this type of criminal activity.”
Two more charged
Separately, Christopher Weatherhead, 20, from Northampton, and Ashley Rhodes, 26, from Kennington, South London, were yesterday charged over suspected Anonymous hacks.
A 22-year-old from Hartlepool, Peter Gibson has already been charged with the same offence as has a 17-year-old from Chester. All four will appear on bail at City of Westminster’s Court on 7 September.
The charges are believed to relate to retaliatory DDoS attacks on organisations that cut off Wikileaks’ funding when it began leaking sensitive US diplomatic communiqués late last year.
Wikileaks itself claimed to be under a sustained attack earlier this week following its biggest dump of leaked diplomatic cables yet.
Scotland Yard has arrested more than half a dozen suspected Lulzsec and Anonymous hackers this summer as the self-proclaimed hacktivists have intensified a campaign of harassment and data theft against “the establishment”.
