Hong Kong police have arrested five suspects, including a 13 year old, in connection with hacking attacks targeting government websites in support of pro-democracy protesters.
The arrests come days after hacker collective Anonymous threatened to attack government websites in retaliation for alleged abusive treatment of the protesters.
The suspects were arrested during raids of four premises in North Point, Yuen Long, Wong Tai Sin and Chai Wan. Six computers were seized in connection with the investigation.
Suspects include an 18-year old Year 1 student of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and a 39-year old car repairer, who allegedly launched cyber attacks on government websites, including the Hong Kong Police Force website and the online government telephone directory.
Both suspects were charged separately with the criminal offence "Access to computer with criminal or dishonest intent". The PolyU student had reportedly launched attacks on the Hong Kong Police Force website 11,552 times in less than an hour.
According to the charge, the two accused had dishonestly accessed computers at home on October 4. According to local news outlet Mingpao News, the Office of the Government Chief Information officer had on October 4 between 00:53-01:44 discovered the cyber attacks on the Hong Kong Police website. Subsequently, through tracing the IP address, the police tracked down the student suspect, who admitted to have visited a hacking website and attacked the police website using hacking tools.
The car repairer suspect, who said he had heard of the hacker group "Anonymous," said his computer was not switched on when the alleged cyber attack occurred. He wondered whether it was a Trojan program in action.