UK police name, charge suspected LulzSec hacker Topiary

Police in the United Kingdom have named and charged the 18-year-old arrested last week in connection with hacking groups LulzSec and Anonymous, according to Sophos’ Naked Security blog.

Jake Davis is set to appear in court on Monday and will be charged with five hacking-related offenses. Despite online rumors that British police were tricked into arresting the wrong person last week by the hacking groups, authorities remain confident that Davis is indeed the LulzSec spokesman “Topiary.”

The charges being leveled at Davis include:

• Unauthorised access to a computer system, contrary to Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990;
• Encouraging / assisting offences, contrary to S46 of the Serious Crime Act 2007;
• Conspiracy with others to carry out a Distributed Denial of Service Attack on the website of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency contrary to S1 Criminal Law Act 1977
• Conspiracy to commit offences of section 3 Computer Misuse Act 1990, contrary to S1 Criminal Law Act 1977
• Conspiracy between the defendant and others to commit offences of section 3 Computer Misuse Act 1990 contrary to S1 Criminal Law Act 1977.

Naked Security points out that the Serious Organised Crime Agency is in fact the UK’s division for investigating cybercrime. Egg, meet face.

Police could very well make an example out of Davis for his crimes, since he appears to be one of the more significant members arrested from the hacker groups. And the fact that he was allegedly linked to an attack on the UK’s own cybersecurity squad surely won’t help his case.

The news follows last week’s call by LulzSec and Anonymous for a PayPal boycott (with no hacking involved), as a response to a recent string of FBI arrests of Anonymous members.