LONDON — A British teenager, reportedly the leader of the LulzSec hacker group that hit 56 porn sites last week including tube site Pron.com, was arrested today.
According to ArsTechnica, 19-year-old Ryan Cleary is a member of the Anonymous and LulzSec hacker groups. He is being held in London on suspicion of offenses under the Computer Misuse Act and Fraud Act.
Cleary is believed to have been running the Lulz Security Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server. He was formally operating IRC servers used by AnonOps, a faction of the Anonymous group that coordinated attacks on entities they felt were "enemies" of WikiLeaks and various Middle Eastern governments, until a bitter split last month.
LulzSec was responsible for stealing and posting administrative emails and outing 26,000 emails and passwords from users in its hit on tube site Pron.com.
The group also targeted PBS.org, Sony, Nintendo, the CIA and the British census bureau.
British police, along with the FBI said they have seized a "significant amount" of material from Cleary's address that is now undergoing forensic examination.
But LulzSec is denying that its leader was caught and quicky Tweeted, “Seems the glorious leader of LulzSec arrested, it’s all over now … wait …still here! Which poor bastard did they take down?”
The group's website is still online but its member communication IRC server is down — consistent with claims that he was the gang's ringleader.