Lauri Love, a Briton in his late twenties, has been arrested in UK on charges of violating the Computer Misuse Act in the UK and accessing a U.S. government computer without permission and conspiracy in the US.
The 28 year old was arrested on Friday by officers from the UK’s National Crime Agency’s cyber crime unit. Love along with three other unnamed coconspirators, who are believed to be residents of Australia and Sweden, were involved in activities to “disrupt the operations and infrastructure of the United States government.” Love has been released on bail till February 2014.
According to New Jersey attorney Paul Fishman, Love and his coconspirators stole military data and personal information of military personnel. According to the indictment, Love and three others placed backdoors within their target networks between October 2012 and October 2013, “which allowed them to return to the compromised computer systems at a later date and steal confidential data.”
The team stole data including budgeting information, personal details of thousands of military personnel and disposal of military facilities. According to the indictment, the four identified their targets, planned and carried out the attacks over secure online IRC – internet relay chats. The conspirators often used proxy servers to conceal their actual IP addresses and even changed their nicknames on the forums further conceal their identities. Love used nicknames such as ‘nsh’ and ‘route’ and ‘peace’ notes Reuters.
According to Andy Archibald, the head of the NCA’s cyber crime unit the arrests were a result of the co-operation between NCA, Scottish police and ‘international partners’ notes The Financial Times. No further information on ‘international partners’ is available as yet.
