Essex teenager arrested for hacking and DDoS

A 19-year-old man has been arrested by the Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime Unit following an investigation into network intrusions and distributed denial-of-service attacks against international businesses and intelligence agencies.

According to a statement from the Met on Tuesday, searches took place at a residential address in Wickford, Essex, and the teenager was arrested on Monday night on suspicion of offences under the Computer Misuse Act and Fraud Act. The investigation involved the FBI and, according to some reports, the attacks may correlate to those perpetrated by the LulzSec and Anonymous activist groups.

LulzSec has previously hacked the US Senate, the CIA, the NHS and an FBI partner company, as well as various games and entertainment companies. On Sunday, the group teamed up with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) specialists Anonymous to launch an operation called AntiSec, or Anti-Security.

The first AntiSec victim appears to have been the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), which on Tuesday confirmed it came under DDoS attack on Monday.

The teenager arrested on Monday is currently in custody at a central London police station, where he is being held for questioning.