UK police charge man in connection with Anonymous DDoS attacks

A 22-year-old student has been charged by British police in connection with denial-of-service attacks carried out by the Anonymous hacktivist group.

Peter David Gibson, of Hartlepool, County Durham, was arrested on April 5th by the PCeU (Police Central e-Crime Unit) as part of a police investigation into a series of high profile DDoS attacks against various organisations.

According to a police statement Gibson has been charged with conspiracy to impair the operation of a computer or hinder access to a program or data.

In late 2010/early 2011, hackers were making the headlines recently for launching attacks against websites of organisations and governments who they felt were anti-WikiLeaks, or who they felt had tried to censor freedom of…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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