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TalkTalk attack: Lad, 15, cuffed by UK cyber-cops

Police swoop on home in Northern Ireland following 'sophisticated cyberattack'

A 15-year-old boy has been arrested by police probing the hacking of Brit ISP TalkTalk.

The internet provider admitted on Thursday last week that someone had waged "a significant and sustained cyberattack," upon its website, and potentially swiped copies of sensitive information on four million subscribers.

This info could include names, home addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, and "incomplete" bank account details and credit card numbers. TalkTalk claimed it had no legal obligation to encrypt the data, which was probably accessed using a primitive SQL injection attack.

Today, at 1620 GMT, cops in Northern Ireland searched a home in County Antrim, and cuffed the schoolboy on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act offenses in connection with the cyberattack.

His home is still being scoured, and he will spend the evening being grilled by detectives, we're told.

"This is a joint investigation by Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit detectives, the Police Service of Northern Ireland's Cyber Crime Centre (CCC) and the National Crime Agency," the plod added in a statement. ®

The Register has created a timeline of TalkTalk's contradictory comments following on from the initial announcement of a website outage.

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