An alleged member of the online hacktivist group Anonymous has been arrested by the London’s Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime Unit.
The Met Police said that Peter David Gibson has been charged with "conspiracy to do an unauthorised act in relation to a computer, with intent to impair the operation of any computer or prevent or hinder access to any programme or data held in a computer or to impair the operation of any such programme or the reliability of such data – contrary to Sec 1(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977".
Gibson, 22, is a student living in Hartlepool, Cleveland, UK. He is slated to appear on bail at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 7 September.
Anonymous — infamous for their attacks against Visa, Mastercard, Sony and The Sun – shot into limelight late last year after it brought down the services of Visa and Mastercard against the decision to block payment access to whistleblower and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
So far, the UK police has arrested six people – Gibson and five others aged, 15, 16, 19, 20 and 26 — in connection with the hacking attacks codenamed by Anonymous as ‘Operation Avenge Assange’.
Authorities in the US have also arrested 16 people in July following the January attacks.
The Guardian reported that the FBI is screening a list of 1,000 IP addresses that were identified by PayPal as sources of the DDOS attacks in the January attack.
