British teen arrested over CIA, US Senate hacking

British police working with the FBI have arrested a 19-year-old man over attacks by the Lulz Security hacking group on the websites of the CIA, US Senate, Sony and others, Scotland Yard said on Tuesday. The man was arrested on Monday night at a house in Wickford in Essex, over allegations of fraud and computer misuse. He is being questioned at a London police station, it said in a statement. A police source confirmed to AFP: "Yes, the arrest is in connection with the Lulz Security attacks. We believe this to be a significant arrrest." The hacker group known as Lulz Security has claimed responsibility for a month-long rampage on targets that also include Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency, which was attacked on Monday. The Scotland Yard statement said: "Officers from the Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime Unit have arrested a 19-year-old man in a pre-planned intelligence-led operation. "The arrest follows an investigation into network intrusions and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against a number of international businesses and intelligence agencies by what is believed to be the same hacking group." Under a DDoS attack, a website is overwhelmed with traffic and becomes sluggish or unresponsive. "Searches at a residential address in Wickford, Essex, following the arrest last night have led to the examination of a significant amount of material. These forensic examinations remain ongoing," the statement said. Scotland Yard said British police have been "working in cooperation with the FBI" in the run-up to the arrest. There have been no postings since early Tuesday on a Twitter account purportedly operated by Lulz. Lulz knocked out the CIA's public website, cia.gov, for about two hours last week using a DDoS attack and also hacked into the US Senate's public website. The group has also released tens of thousands of user names and passwords stolen from Sony and other sites. In an online manifesto posted last week, Lulz -- whose name is a derivative of the text shorthand for LOL, or "laugh out loud" -- said they were staging the attacks for their own entertainment. "You find it funny to watch havoc unfold, and we find it funny to cause it," it said. "For the past month and a bit, we've been causing mayhem and chaos throughout the Internet, attacking several targets including PBS, Sony, Fox, porn websites, FBI, CIA, the US government, Sony some more, online gaming servers," Lulz said.