An
unidentified British 16-year-old boy was arrested secretly in London for his
part in the biggest cyber-attack that occurred earlier this year on Dutch
anti-spam group Spamhaus.
The arrest
had been made since April but it only got to the media this week after London Evening Standard reported the issue on Thursday. The arrest was revealed during
a ministerial visit by James Brokenshire MP to UK government cyber unit last
week.
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| Img: AFP |
The boy was
taken into custody after investigations revealed that significant sums of money
were flowing through his account. It was also found during the raid of the
house that he was logged into several virtual systems and forums.
The document
of the operation which was dubbed Operation Rashlike revealed details about the
largest distribution denial of service (DDoS) attack in history.
“The subject
was found with his computer systems open and logged on to various virtual
systems and forums.
“The subject
has a significant amount of money flowing through his bank account. Financial
investigators are in the process of restraining monies.” the document revealed.
The 16 year
old has been granted bail and is expected to face trial later in the year. It
is yet unclear his specific part in the DDoS attack.
Another
arrest was carried out at the same time when a 35 year old Dutchman who lives
in Spain, Sven Kamphuis, was arrested. Kamphuis worked for Cyberbunker, a
hosting company that hosts any website “except child porn and anything related
to terrorism”.
Spamhaus
reportedly blacklisted Cyberbunker as a spam and this brought on the DDoS
attack. At a size of 300Gbps, it is the biggest DDoS attack in history and it
slowed down the internet in some part of Europe during the attack according to
reports.
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16-year-old boy arrested for the biggest ever cyber attack