Teenagers Arrested After SOCA DDoS

Two teenagers have been arrested in Norway on suspicion of carrying out distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on a variety of websites, including a hit on the UK Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).

It is believed the two unnamed teenagers, aged 18 and 19, were responsible for hitting the Norwegian Lottery, the Norwegian Police Security Service, the Norwegian bank DNB, Germany’s Bild Magazine as well as SOCA, according to reports.

Norway’s National Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) said the pair were charged towards the end of last week and they now face a maximum sentence of six years if prosecuted.

SOCA sting

“We have arrested the two we think were most important in these attacks, but we still want to talk to more people,” Norwegian prosecutor Erik Moestue told the BBC.

“We know SOCA was recently attacked, as well as Norwegian and American sites, and that is one of the things that we are looking into.”

TechWeekEurope learnt last week the SOCA website was forced offline for some time over 2 and 3 May. No culprit or motivation was identified, but SOCA was hit by hacktivist group LulzSec last year.

Rik Ferguson, director of security research and communication at Trend Micro, suggested a hacktivist group was a likely suspect, but chief research officer at F-Secure, Mikko Hypponen, said he thought organised crime gangs were possible candidates too. SOCA recently took down 36 websites selling personal information and credit card details.

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