Teenage hacker charges unrelated to gaming
19 year old appearing in court today under Computer Misuse Act
Ryan Cleary, the 19 year old hacker from Essex, will be in court today on Computer Misuse Act charges, but is apparently unconnected to recent attacks on industry sites.
The official statement from the Metropolitan Police lists the charges as relating to Distributed Denial of Service attacks on the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the British Phonographic Industry.
Hacker group Lulzsec claimed responsibility for the SOCA attack, leading to suggestions that Cleary was part of the collective, but the group used its Twitter to publicly distance itself from the teenager.
"Ignorant press have failed to realize that actual authorities - i.e. Scotland Yard - didn't imply in the slightest that Ryan was LulzSec," it said. "They charge him with the SOCA attack, maybe he hit SOCA after we did? It was suspiciously down again after we let it up."
Lulzsec has admitted to hacking into the sites or user records of Sony, Nintendo, Bethesda as well as online games Minecraft, League of Legends and Eve Online.