Alleged computer hacker arrested in joint UK-US police operation

The man arrested has been named locally as Ryan Cleary, according to media reports. Police say they have recovered evidence from a home in Essex, but have not named the arrested man.

The BBC reported that police had told it that the man's arrest was in connection with recent attacks by hacker group LulzSec on the websites of the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) and the US's CIA.

"Searches at a residential address in Wickford, Essex, following the arrest last night have led to the examination of a significant amount of material," the Met said in a statement.

"These forensic examinations remain ongoing," the Met said.

The arrested teenager is suspected of offences under the Computer Misuse Act and Fraud Act and has been taken to a London police station for questioning, the Met said.

Under the Computer Misuse Act a person is guilty of an offence if they cause a computer "to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer, or to enable any such access to be secured" without authorisation and with the knowledge that their behaviour is not permitted.

UK police worked with the FBI, the federal criminal investigatory body in the US, in a "pre-planned intelligence-led operation" to make the arrest, the Met 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 Met said in a statement.

Distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks involve using malware-infected computers to bombard a website with such large amounts of traffic that it ceases to function.

A number of high-profile Government websites and businesses have recently reported hacking attacks.

SOCA said it had taken its website offline after detecting a DDOS attack by hackers, and organisations including Citigroup, Sony, Acer and Nintendo have all admitted to being victims of recent hacking attacks.

Hacking group LulzSec has declared it is responsible for some of the attacks, and has claimed it also breached online security at the FBI and US Senate.

The group recently announced that it was actively targeting government agencies, banks and other "high-level" organisations. It has denied that Ryan Cleary is a member of LulzSec.

"Ryan Cleary is not part of LulzSec; we house one of our many legitimate chatrooms on his IRC server, but that's it," LulzSec said on Twitter.

"We use Ryan's server, we also use Efnet, 2600, Rizon and AnonOps IRC servers. That doesn't mean they're all part of our group," LulzSec said.

"Clearly the UK police are so desperate to catch us that they've gone and arrested someone who is, at best, mildly associated with us. Lame," the hacking group posted on the micro-blogging site.

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