Hacker linked with distributed Web attacks is collared by the Mounties

The teenager alleged to have jammed some of the largest sites on the Internet earlier this year has been arrested in Canada for violating his bail.

The 16-year-old alleged hacker, who cannot be named under Canadian law but uses the online moniker "Mafiaboy", was originally arrested 19 April, accused of launching distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on CNN, eBay, Yahoo! and others in February.

Mafiaboy has again been arrested by Montreal police for violating bail by playing truant from high school, according to Associated Press.

A DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack takes an old hacking trick to a new level. By taking over an army of remote machines connected to the Internet, an assailant is able to bombard a site with a tidal wave of fake requests that is impossible to stop.

The FBI arrested Mafiaboy after investigating chatroom logs and computers at the University of California.

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