Police have arrested a 19-year-old in a raid in the Shetland Isles in Scotland, suspected to be a leading member of the cyber-hacking groups Anonymous and LulzSec, responsible for attacks on corporate targets ranging from Visa and Mastercard to Sony and The Sun.
The alleged hacker, who police believe is an activist using the online nickname "Topiary", was arrested by the Metropolitan Police’s e-Crime Unit on suspicion of being involved in "network intrusions and Distributed Denial of Service attacks".
The raid was carried out with the assistance of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency (SCDEA) and Lincolnshire Constabulary.
London police are searching a residential address in Lincolnshire and a 17-year-old male is being questioned in connection with the inquiry.
Topiary is believed to have controlled the main Twitter account of LulzSec, which the group used to publish data obtained by hacking into corporate and government networks.
The arrest of Topiary is the third in the UK in the search for members of the group, following the arrest of Ryan Cleary, in Essex, UK in June, and the arrest of a 16-year-old known online as Tflow.
LulzSec earlier had claimed to have carried out attacks on several sites, including the Sun which redirected readers to a fake story claiming Rupert Murdoch was dead as well as attacks on the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency, an FBI-affiliated site, the US Congress, and Sony’s European network.
