The UK Police have confirmed the arrest of a 16-year-old boy on suspicion of being behind the hacking of emails of top US officials in 2015 and the posting online of private information of 30,000 US government employees.
While the first act was carried out by a hacker known as “Cracka”, the second was orchestrated by a hacker who went by the pseudonym “DotGovs”.
However, the South East Regional Organized Crime Unit (SEROCU) said the teen from East Midlands, England, could be one and the same person.
The unit said it arrested the youth in connection with three alleged violations of the Computer Misuse Act of 1990.
He has since been released on bail.
Cracka was one of the members of the Crackas With Attitude (CWA), the group that boasted of hacking into the private email accounts of Director of the CIA, John Brennan; Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper and the senior White House adviser on science and technology, John Holdren.
When the acts were committed, Cracka said on social media that he was a teen living in England.
The teen when he was picked up by the unit on Tuesday, February 9, said he was not who the unit thought he was.
On the other hand, DotGovs last week broke into the computer system of the US Department of Justice, releasing the names and other information of 29,000 operatives of the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation on Monday.
The two hackers are believed to be the same person due to the similarity in the tactics used in carrying out both operations.
They both used a technique called “social engineering”, which involved obtaining private passwords from service providers or tech support by posing as an authorised holder of the account – rather than computer encryption, which was more susceptible to suspicion.
Also, on both occasions, the hackers said the attacks were aimed at punishing the US for its policies supporting Israel, against the creation of a free Palestine state.
The argument as to whether the two hackers were the same persons or not has continued to rage on among hackers on Vice Motherboard, with many proffering reasons either side of the divide.
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