A 16-year-old London schoolboy had been secretly arrested for allegedly being part of an international gang of cyber-criminals responsible for ‘massive’ distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) attack in the history against Dutch internet regulator Spamhaus.
The arrest comes in the wake of an international police operation, dubbed Operation Rashlike, against those alleged of carrying out the attack, which had reportedly slowed down the internet.
The London teen was arrested at the same time as a 35 year-old Dutchman was arrested for his alleged role in in the attack, while the teen had been released on bail pending a trial during late 2013.
As part of the international investigation, the detectives from the National Cyber Crime Unit arrested the accused at his home in south-west London after large transactions were being made via his bank account, according to the London Evening Standard.
The accused was also found logged on to various virtual systems and forums, while the attack had exploited the DNS system, with fake requests causing DNS servers globally to request data from Spamhaus’ servers.
Claimed to be the ‘largest DDoS attack ever seen’, it had also hit global internet exchanges, including the London Internet Exchange, while had also led to global disruption of the functionality of the internet.
The latest disclosures come prior to the creation of the UK’s National Crime Agency, which would take over the National Cyber Crime Unit as part of a drive against internet offences.
Over half of the 4,000 officers being recruited for the new agency in October will be trained in the battle against cyber crime.
