Teen Arrested in Connection with PlayStation Hack

A British teen has been arrested by London police in connection with a massive security breach of Sony’s PlayStation network. 

CNN reports that the 19-year-old is being held under suspicion of hacking “a number of international businesses and intelligence agencies,” including the PlayStation network, an online gaming platform which hosts 77 million users. In result, the network crashed in mid-May and was not fully operational again until June 2. Shortly after the PlayStation hack, the websites of Sony Pictures and video game company Sega were also hacked, compromising personal information from millions of user accounts. 

The teen, whose name has been withheld by police, was arrested in Essex on Monday night. Police are examining his computer and other hardware for evidence of his affiliation with LulZec, a notorious hacking group that recently took credit for infiltrating the websites of the CIA and news broadcaster PBS.

However, LulZec denies that the teen played an important role in its operations, claiming that the group used the teen’s server but he has no other affiliation with them. Lulzec tweeted, “Clearly the UK police are so desperate to catch us that they’ve gone and arrested someone who is, at best, mildly associated with us. Lame.” 

The group has been described as a spinoff of hacker groups formed in support of WikiLeaks, the organization that released hundreds of high-security US government documents last year. However, Lulzec, which identifies itself on Twitter as “the world’s leaders in high-quality entertainment at your expense,” claims to carry out hacking operations to encourage its victims to implement more effective web security measures.