Dutch police arrest teenager over pro-WikiLeaks hacking incidents

AMSTERDAM - Dutch authorities have reportedly arrested a 16-year-old teenager over his alleged involvement in the pro-WikiLeaks hacking attacks on the Visa and MasterCard websites.

The Wall Street Journal quoted a spokesman for the Dutch prosecution office as saying that police have arrested the suspect at his home in The Hague late Wednesday night, adding that he had acknowledged being involved in the attacks on the websites of the two credit-card companies.

According to Dutch police, the suspect is part of a larger group of WikiLeaks sympathizers behind the so-called ‘denial-of-service attacks’, in which computers flood a server to prevent it from displaying a Web page, the paper said.

The boy is in the custody and would reportedly appear before a judge on Friday.

MasterCard Inc. and Visa Europe, which both recently suspended payments to WikiLeaks, are among a growing list of organizations and individuals that have suffered online attacks in recent days.

The group behind the attacks appears to be a collection of people identifying themselves as “Anonymous,” but the leader of the group has not been identified so far, the paper added.

The computer attacks have increased in intensity in recent days following the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in connection with sexual-misconduct allegations in Sweden. He was denied bail and would face a hearing in the U.K. next week, the paper said. (ANI)