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ROUNDUP: British teenager arrested in hacking probe Eds: adds background, LulzSec reaction
[June 21, 2011]

ROUNDUP: British teenager arrested in hacking probe Eds: adds background, LulzSec reaction


Jun 21, 2011 (dpa - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- LONDON/SAN FRANCISCO -- Police in Britain have arrested a 19-year-old suspected of masterminding an international computer hacking group, Scotland Yard said Tuesday.



"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," a Scotland Yard spokesman in London said.

The teenager, named as Ryan Cleary, was believed to have been a "major player" with LulzSec, a hacking group linked with a breach at Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) on Monday, and earlier attacks on the websites of the US Senate and the CIA.


The arrest comes just two days after LulzSec announced an alliance with another notorious hacking ring, Anonymous, in which the two groups pledged to launch "Operation Anti-Security" to attack government websites around the world to protest attempts to regulate the internet and curtail online privacy.

Twitter messages purported to be from the chaos-devoted hacking ring downplayed the significance of the arrest and promised that the wave of cyber-attacks would continue.

In a Twitter message, @LulzSec posted a message saying, "Seems the glorious leader of LulzSec got arrested, it's all over now ... wait ... we're all still here! Which poor bastard did they take down?" It later added, "hey, if someone out there hacked the UK government in the name of #AntiSec, well done sirs!" Another Twitter user, @anonymouSabu, claimed "all members of lulzsec are safe.

Authorities on both side of the Atlantic have been trying to trace the hacking group, which also claimed credit for security breaches at games firms Nintendo and Sony.

The arrest, which followed a joint, intelligence-led probe by Scotland Yard and the FBI, took place at a residential address in Wickford, in the British southern county of Essex, where the examination of a "significant amount of material" continued, police said.

To see more of dpa, go to http://www.dpa.de/English.82.0.html Copyright (c) 2011, dpa, Berlin Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com.

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