A 16-year-old boy in the Netherlands has been arrested in connection with the massive online attacks that brought down the websites of MasterCard and Visa this week, according to the security firm Sophos.
Sophos reported today (Dec. 9) that the teenager – his name was not given – is in police custody and is being interrogated by the Dutch National High-Tech Crime Team about the Visa and MasterCard online attacks, as well as attacks on the websites of the Swedish public prosecutors and the bank Swiss Post. The report says that computers were seized, and "it appears that the authorities are not ruling out further arrests."
The distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) were perpetrated against MasterCard, PayPal and Visa for their cooperation with the United States government in refusing to do business with WikiLeaks.
