Teen 'Hacker' In Court Over Website Attacks

An Essex teenager has been charged with carrying out a hacking attack on the website of the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency.

Ryan Cleary, 19, is also accused of launching attacks on the websites of music bodies the British Phonographic Industry and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

He will appear in custody at City of Westminster Magistrates Court later charged with a total of five offences under the Criminal Law and Computer Misuse Acts, Scotland Yard said.

The university student was arrested at his detached family home in Wickford, Essex, as part of a Scotland Yard and FBI probe into the LulzSec group.

It came a day after the collective claimed to have brought down the US Central Intelligence Agency's website .

The group has also claimed responsibility for hacking attempts on the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency, the US Senate and attacks on computer games giants Sony and Nintendo.

The Twitter user behind the @LulzSec page recently declared plans to break into government websites and leak confidential documents.

A message on the same account has denied that the teenager was a member of the group.

Cleary is charged with conspiring with other people on or before June 20 to create a remotely-controlled network of zombie computers, known as a "botnet", to carry out distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, where websites are flooded with traffic to make them crash.

It is claimed he launched such an attack on the Serious Organised Crime Agency's website on June 20.

He is also alleged to have attacked the British Phonographic Industry and International Federation of the Phonographic Industry websites in October and November respectively last year.

Investigations are continuing into other alleged hacking attacks in the UK and abroad.

It had been claimed that LulzSec had stolen the entire 2011 UK census database, but this has been denied by the group and by the Office for National Statistics.