Man arrested for encouraging DDoS on UK gov sites

An unnamed 41-year-old man from Stoke-on-Trent, a city in Staffordshire, England, was arrested for allegedly encouraging distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on websites for U.K.'s Home Office and Home Secretary Theresa May in June. According to The Telegraph, the man was arrested Tuesday morning, questioned, then bailed pending further inquiries. Hacktivist group Anonymous claimed responsibility for earlier DDoS attacks on the same government sites, which happened throughout April, calling the move a protest for treatment of Gary McKinnon, who was arrested in 2002 for hacking into Pentagon and other U.S. government and military computer systems. Last month, May halted McKinnon's extradition to the United States to face charges stemming from the alleged breaches, saying McKinnon, who suffers from depressive illness and Asperger's syndrome, was at high risk of committing suicide.

More in News

Privacy-bolstering "Apps Act" introduced in House

The bill would provide consumers nationwide with similar protections already enforced by a California law.

Microsoft readies permanent fix for Internet Explorer bug used in energy attacks

Microsoft is prepping a whopper of a security update that will close 33 vulnerabilities, likely including an Internet Explorer (IE) flaw that has been used in targeted website attacks against the U.S. government.

Weakness in Adobe ColdFusion allowed court hackers access to 160K SSNs

Up to 160,000 Social Security numbers and one million driver's license numbers may have been accessed by intruders.