UK teen charged over hacking

2011-06-23 07:37

London - British police filed charges on Wednesday against a teenager suspected of involvement in cyber attacks on the CIA website.

Ryan Cleary, 19, has been charged with five offenses under the Computer Misuse Act, police said.

One of the charges relates to bringing down the website of Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency - the UK's FBI equivalent - using a flood of traffic, in what is known as a "distributed denial of service" attack.

The teenager is suspected of having ties to the Lulz Security hacking collective, which has recently targeted Sony, the CIA website and the US Senate computer system.

Cleary was arrested on Tuesday following a joint operation with the FBI. All of the charges announced on Wednesday are UK related and it was not known if the FBI also planned to file charges.

The charges against him date to events as far back as October 29 - when Cleary is accused of attacking the website of the British Phonographic Industry. An attack on the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry followed just one month later, police said.

The timing of those two attacks appears linked to a hacking operation dubbed "Operation Payback", led by a group of hackers known as Anonymous, which targeted music sites worldwide.

- AP