British police arrest teenager for hacking US security services

British police have arrested a 16-year-old allegedly part of the ‘Crackas With Attitude’ group. He claimed to be responsible for the hacks on CIA director John Brennan and the head of the American intelligence services James Clapper.

The teen is also suspected of being partly responsible for the recent release of the data of 9,000 US Justice officials and 20,000 FBI employees, CNN reports. It is not yet clear what crimes the charges against him contain. According to CNN, the FBI assumed that the perpetrators would be arrested soon, when it turned out that teenagers were hiding behind ‘Crackas With Attitude’. Still, tracking down the teen was more difficult than expected, until the FBI accelerated the investigation after the most recent hack.

For example, it turned out at the arrest that the sixteen-year-old was using a ‘plug-in’ operating system, with which traces could easily be erased. The message contains no further details, but it is likely that this refers to an operating system such as Tails, which runs from a USB stick. Investigators were “shocked that a 16-year-old computer geek managed to hide his tracks so carefully,” according to CNN. It is not clear from the reports whether the ‘Crackas’ group now consists of one or more people. The Brennan and Clapper hacks always involved a ‘group of hackers’, as the name suggests.