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UK Suspect Arrested In Connection With PSN/XBL 'Lizard Squad' Attacks

Posted by timothy on from the just-a-bit-of-fun dept.

Dave Knott writes UK Police have arrested an 18-year-old man over involvement in the cyber-attacks on Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live gaming services over Christmas, for which the Lizard Squad hacking group claimed responsibility. The man was arrested Friday in Southport, England, on suspicion of computer hacking, threats to kill and swatting. Computers and other electronic devices were seized during the arrest by officers from two UK cybercrime units working in conjunction with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. A spokesman said that police were still in the early stages of an investigation working closely with the FBI to identify further people involved in the attacks.

55 comments

  1. SWATting... Swatting? Who knows... by mythosaz · · Score: 1

    HA!

    Oh man, you guys really got me with this swatting at my house.

    Wait, what?

  2. good by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

    hopefully if he is one of the guilty parties he gets a nice long stay for many years in a very small cell.

    1. Re:good by mythosaz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      While he certainly screwed up my after-Christmas plans, I'm not quite ready to have him test new lethal injection drugs in Florida yet...

      An 18-year old non-violent offender should get an option to demonstrate the three R's of the criminal defense system. Remorse, recant, restitution.

      He needs a felony charge (that matches his crimes) that, upon successful completion of jail/probation/community-service can be commuted to a misdemeanor.

    2. Re:good by bloodhawk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      calling emergency services with fake call outs puts peoples lives at risk. The XBL and PSN part was just a mean spirited low scumbag act, the rest is what he should be in Jail for.

    3. Re:good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      threats to kill and swatting

      Didn't even read TFS?

    4. Re:good by gnasher719 · · Score: 2

      An 18-year old non-violent offender should get an option to demonstrate the three R's of the criminal defense system. Remorse, recant, restitution.

      It seems that he made calls to the US police to get SWAT teams to someone's house. That is most definitely not "non-violent". It's something that can easily get someone killed, and that is very likely to inflict violence on someone, and that violence or killing is the desired effect.

    5. Re:good by _xeno_ · · Score: 1

      And did he actually carry out those threats or is the traditional police tactic of "let's charge with literally everything we can and see what sticks?"

      Because nothing in the article elaborates on these so called death threats and swatting claims. It's almost entirely about the LizardSquad DDOS, that involved neither of those.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
    6. Re:good by circletimessquare · · Score: 1

      ignoring the death threats and fake SWAT calls... what gives the douchebag the right to deny a little holiday joy to thousands of kids?

      why do you think that's no big deal?

      you honestly believe lulz by a handful of asocial shitbags is somehow equivalent to thousands of kids enjoying their presents?

      --
      intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    7. Re:good by _xeno_ · · Score: 1

      You do realize there is a massive realm of potential punishment between "nothing" and "years in a small cell," right?

      Wait, I recognize your user name, which means you almost certainly do not.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
    8. Re:good by circletimessquare · · Score: 1

      so tell us, what is the appropriate punishment, in your mind

      then add in the death threats and SWATting

      and then tell us again what exactly you are fucking complaining about

      --
      intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    9. Re:good by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Informative

      Uh, that seems kind of harsh for someone who's crime is preventing people from playing with their new toys on Christmas day.

      Swatting is attempted murder.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    10. Re:good by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

      so tell us, what is the appropriate punishment...

      A SWAT team should come by and take away his Gameboy, and shoot his vicious hamster just for good measure.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    11. Re:good by _xeno_ · · Score: 0

      I'll just point you to mythosaz's comment since otherwise I'd just copy it.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
    12. Re:good by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

      He? He who?? Who the hell was arrested???

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    13. Re:good by circletimessquare · · Score: 1

      likewise

      http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...

      --
      intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    14. Re:good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is no evidence anywhere that punishment helps.

      You lock people up because they're a danger, not to punish them - the latter is sadist retribution.

      If found guilty, I'd give him the opportunity to recognise and understand his mistakes, find out why not if he doesn't, then require him to provide restitution: community service for a community he's harmed.

    15. Re:good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      An 18-year old non-violent offender should get an option to demonstrate the three R's of the criminal defense system. Remorse, recant, restitution.

      It seems that he made calls to the US police to get SWAT teams to someone's house. That is most definitely not "non-violent". It's something that can easily get someone killed, and that is very likely to inflict violence on someone, and that violence or killing is the desired effect.

      That may be the case, but SWAT teams should not be shooting people who are not shooting in the first place. Nor should they be the first responders either.

    16. Re:good by bloodhawk · · Score: 2

      So you can't even bother to read the full summary let alone the article? The arrest included charges for Swatting and threats to kill.

    17. Re:good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is no evidence anywhere that punishment helps.

      You lock people up because they're a danger, not to punish them - the latter is sadist retribution.

      If found guilty, I'd give him the opportunity to recognise and understand his mistakes, find out why not if he doesn't, then require him to provide restitution: community service for a community he's harmed.

      punishment isn't just about retribution, it is also meant as a deterrent for others. If others see that all you get for endangering peoples lives is a slap on the wrist as long as you apologise and genuinely show remorse then you are going to get a lot of people that take that as a free ticket to do what they want as they don't perceive any real risk to themselves for the crime. The reality is the community has more than its share of self obsessed sociopaths who like this guy who only care about themselves, the only thing stopping many of them is the fear of what happens when they get caught, once you remove that fear all hell breaks loose.

    18. Re:good by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      Personally I don't believe their are a huge realm of possible punishments once you intentionally risk the lives of others. That is not a minor offense, If he is actually guilty he needs to be charged with attempted murder and receive the appropriate sentence to go with that.

    19. Re:good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      calling emergency services with fake call outs puts peoples lives at risk. The XBL and PSN part was just a mean spirited low scumbag act, the rest is what he should be in Jail for.

      http://sdcvietnam.com/ shit

    20. Re:good by circletimessquare · · Score: 1

      if someone proves that with their freedoms they abuse others, they have forfeited their right to freedom

      if someone robs people, you lock them up, no one is robbed by that person anymore

      if someone rapes people, you lock them up, no is raped by that person anymore

      if someone DDoSes services, SWATs people, and threatens to kill, you lock them up, that person isn't doing that anymore

      it would be nice to help these people, but it's more important to help the rest of us live our lives

      unbothered by shitbags with serious transgressive amoral problems

      *sadistic* assholes hellbent on deranged ideas of *retribution* have proven to society they do not deserve freedoms

      society doesn't have infinite resources

      priority job number one: keep asocial douchebags away from abusing society

      distant job number two: help them with what limited resources we have, if we even can help them

      --
      intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    21. Re:good by bloodhawk · · Score: 2

      really you think the first responders to armed sieges or those on rampages with guns should be a couple of cops if their is a SWAT available? you think it is best to get an extra couple of ill prepared people killed first to make sure the threat is real? A SWAT team is far better trained to correctly evaluate a threat than the average cop. Chances are if cops were being sent in first in these situations then we probably would have more fatalities.

    22. Re:good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe this has more to do that SWAT teams are so dangerous that it is recognised as being so out of control that anyone can use them as a very effective and lethal weapon to another person.

      I mean even in the U.S.A. you will need to wait a few days to get a handgun; but an anonymous phone call is enough to send in an dangerous armed squad into any place you want.

    23. Re:good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And did he actually carry out those threats or is the traditional police tactic of "let's charge with literally everything we can and see what sticks?"

      that is for a court to decide, he was just responding pointing out your failure to read. perhaps my memory fails me but I seem to recall members of lizard squad bragging about doing those exact things though.

    24. Re:good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe you should be more concerned with the apparently default setting for violence that your police force uses.

    25. Re:good by gnasher719 · · Score: 1

      Swatting is attempted murder.

      That, and swatting from the UK to the USA could get you extradited. Actually, I think it should get you extradited.

    26. Re: good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wrong and naive. Punishment is necessary, it is the means by which the authorities make an example of you so as to deter others from challenging them. This guy will be made an example of. His life is over.

    27. Re: good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What about the bomb threat on the Sony executives flight? They landed a god damn commercial air liner for this moron kid.

    28. Re:good by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      Maybe this has more to do that SWAT teams are so dangerous that it is recognised as being so out of control that anyone can use them as a very effective and lethal weapon to another person.

      That's another discussion entirely.

      But can we agree that calling the police with fabricated dire threats of terrorism or hostage-taking in order to silence someone you don't like is attempted murder, given the current state of policing?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    29. Re:good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well that's typically how it works in countries like here in the UK, and cop killings are ridiculously rare, especially by gun - you can sometimes count years between such incidents in a population of 65million people:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

      In the case of the Lee Rigby killings as an example, where two Islamist extremists had butchered a soldier in London and had at least one gun the normal police force arrived first and worked on moving people away and building a perimeter around these people.

      The armed police then came in to deal with them afterwards.

      If your cops are too ill prepared as to understand that going in without any kind of caution or cover to assess the situation and with no care to put their lives on the line to get civilians out of their which is kind of their job then might I suggest that perhaps your police need to up their recruitment standards and start hiring people with both a backbone and at least some modicum of intelligence?

      If our cops can deal with people with guns without being shot when they basically never have guns themselves, then I'm sure your pistol armed police should be able to figure out how to cope.

      You might as well just escalate all the way to the top with your argument, why bother sending in lesser trained SWAT teams and putting them at risk when you can just call in the navy seals to be super sure!

      You see, the problem with your argument is it works the other way too - sure the cops might be a little more at risk if they're responding first without a SWAT team, but as hinted at in the point above, if you send in a SWAT team first then that puts the civilian at risk instead. Civilians don't pay taxes to get SWAT teams turn up randomly and risk killing them to make sure other officers are safe, they pay their taxes to pay for a police force that makes sure that they're safe.

      The job of cops isn't first and foremost to look after themselves, it's to protect the civilian population. Maybe when American cops figure that out they wont find themselves constantly at war with the civilian population and will be safer in the first place.

  3. Re:SWATting... Swatting? Who knows... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No no, the Republican Congress will just pass a law mandating the destruction of all thermometers. Problem solved!

  4. Re:SWATting... Swatting? Who knows... by the_other_one · · Score: 3, Informative

    Swatting

    --
    134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
  5. Wrong guy by burne · · Score: 0

    By the time this filtered through your TELEX British police already admitted they assume they have the wrong guy:

    http://www.kentonline.co.uk/gr...

    1. Re:Wrong guy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that article is about a 16 year old kid - this one is about an unnamed 18 year old.

    2. Re:Wrong guy by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

      Maybe they asked Verizon or the MPAA to calculate the kid's age?

      --
      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
    3. Re:Wrong guy by Richard_at_work · · Score: 2

      Where does it say that? That article is about someone completely different, not this arrest.

    4. Re:Wrong guy by Xest · · Score: 1

      High standards of journalistic understanding in that article I see:

      "Robert and Carol Cameron and their 16-year-old son Jordan had their lives turned upside down when he was implicated as the supposed mastermind behind the attacks on Xbox and PlayStation networks which left gamers unable to play their consoles online.

      Ironically, he does not even own an Xbox."

      Why is that ironic? They think you need an Xbox to be able to take down Xbox Live and Playstation Network? What?

  6. No names? by fustakrakich · · Score: 0

    That's bullshit! They're just making shit up

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  7. 18 years young by rmdingler · · Score: 1
    Well, isn't that crafty.

    Back in the old days when children played outside voluntarily, it was referred to as a prank call or a bomb threat, depending on how much money your Dad had... so some things are the same.

    For my money, 18 year-old-man is likely a misrepresentation of the facts.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

    1. Re:18 years young by Noah+Haders · · Score: 2

      -1 disagree. swatting is a particularly dangerous type of prank call in which a swat team kicks in your door and carry live weapons. This is different than typical prank calls where you send the fire trucks to somebody's house. also, bomb threats are different than prank calls. Man, you had a messed up childhood.

      "18-year-old man" sounds about right, because he will likely go to pound-you-in-the-ass prison.

    2. Re:18 years young by sg_oneill · · Score: 1

      Back when I was a late teenager , the college I went to had semi regular bomb threats whenever exams or whatever where on. They'd have to evacuate the place so we'd all get the afternoon off. Eventually they caught the kid when he went into the administration office to borrow the phone to make the threat. Clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed.

      --
      Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
    3. Re:18 years young by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      he may not be acting like a "man", but as far as how he is treated by the law he most definitely is a man. Even a child though would be in serious trouble for seriously endangering peoples lives.

    4. Re: 18 years young by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's the UK not USA. Must less anal rape in Prisons.

    5. Re:18 years young by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

      Just a note, but swatting doesn't happen here in the UK, all you would get is a few cars of armed police who would turn up, cordon off the road, and demand you come out of the house. No dramatic raid, only a few guns drawn. The police would basically outwait you.

    6. Re:18 years young by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Back when I was a late teenager

      Oh, I'm glad you came back to life. That's really lucky; not many people do.

    7. Re:18 years young by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      More to the point, swatting is what you do to prepare for a school exam if you have an upper-class accent. No police involvement implied. (It's also the thing you do to an annoying bluebottle, if you have a newspaper to hand.) The summary reads as though they have made reading up on a subject illegal in some way.

    8. Re:18 years young by Richard_at_work · · Score: 1

      That's swotting.

    9. Re: 18 years young by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There isn't much rape in USA prisons either. Its largely a myth... God knows why

    10. Re:18 years young by Noah+Haders · · Score: 1

      you can imagine how dangerous it is in the USA, where 1) the police will shoot at anything that moves to fast and 2) twitchy people will draw down on anything coming into their homes because they have the right to "stand their ground" and "protect their castle".

  8. Re:SWATting... Swatting? Who knows... by Mikkeles · · Score: 1

    What the inquiring mind wants to know: is he North Korean?

    --
    Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
  9. Re:SWATting... Swatting? Who knows... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What the inquiring mind wants to know: is he North Korean?

    All he has to do is claim he's Muslim and that Sony insulted him.

  10. Re:SWATting... Swatting? Who knows... by JackieBrown · · Score: 1

    Busted
    http://science.slashdot.org/co...