A British teenager believed to be the hacker TriCk, a founding member of TeaMp0isoN has reportedly been arrested after launching a denial of service attack against an anti-terrorism hotline in the UK.
The 17 year-old, a resident of Birmingham in the UK, was arrested on April 12 in connection with a high profile “phone bomb” attack on a telephone hotline used to collect reports of possible terrorist activities. The attack, on April 11th, used an automated system to flood the hotline with calls in which a computerized voice said TeamP0ison,” overwhelming phone operators. He and another 16 year old UK teen were arrested by members of the Metropolitan Police’s eCrime Unit and charged with one count of causing a public nuisance and one count of violating the UK’s 1990 Computer Misuse Act, according to Richard Jones, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police.
The Metropolitan Police would not identify the youth by name, citing legal protections for minors. Nor would the agency confirm that either youth was TriCk or a TeaMp0ison member. However, in a post attributed to TeaMp0ison on the Web site Pastebin, the group identified one of the arrested teenagers as founding member TriCk.
“We’ve lost the first and most important member of our team; our founder, our brother, our family member. Most importantly we lost a fighter for freedom, a fighter against corruption,” the statement reads.
Prior to the arrests, the group and the member known as TriCk had been outspoken about their role in the attack on online. In an interview on the Web site Softpedia, someone claiming to be TriCk said the phone bomb attack was run using a software program known as Asterisk running on a compromised server in Malaysia. The attack was launched in retaliation for UK treatment of terrorism suspects and moves recently to extradite suspected terrorists to the U.S.
“The people who have been extradited have done nothing wrong to be extradited to the US, if anything they should have been trialled in the UK, the US has no reason to trial them over there, they are innocent,” he told Softpedia.
Following the attack, the group further harassed the hotline with prank calls, which they recorded and posted on YouTube.
Jones, the spokesman for the Metropolitan Police, said that the 17 year old is scheduled to appear in youth court on May 25th, and that the investigation is ongoing.
