British police said on Friday they had arrested a man in northwest England following the 2014 cyberattacks on Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox systems. Both systems suffered long outages over Christmas after a major distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack. A hacking group calling itself Lizard Squad, which had attacked the two networks earlier last year, claimed responsibility. "Officers ... have arrested a man in Southport, Merseyside this morning as part of an investigation into ‘swatting’ and computer hacking offences," Merseyside police said in a statement. The officers had worked closely with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the operation, it added. No further details of the arrest were immediately available. Swatting is a term used to describe criminal activity by an individual or group who provide false information to law enforcement agencies in the United States, suggesting that a threat exists at a particular location so that police respond with tactical units.
IN-DEPTH
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--- Reuters
