A group of eleven hackers were arrested by the German police as part of an investigation carried out by the local authorities over an Internet forum relying on hacking techniques. According to The Local, the forum had approximately 33,000 members, most of the topics being related to hacking activities, some of them even concerning credit card details or passwords. The eleven hackers had pretty early ages as no less than seven of them were younger than 18 years old, The Local added. Along with the arrest, the investigators have also seized 20 notebooks and multiple hard disks which are going to be analyzed by the German experts.

Obviously, such a young group of hackers caught the attention of security companies which commented the case, underlining the fact that such communities can prove to be extremely dangerous as the members use each others' knowledge to build more advanced malicious applications.

"Although the Internet is by-and-large a wonderful thing, there are some corners of the worldwide web which are dedicated to crime. The price of freedom-of-speech is that sites exist where people are given free reign to discuss how to make other peoples' lives a misery," Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, stated. "Businesses and home users alike need to be on their guard against emerging internet threats, as criminals become ever more organized in their attempts to separate us from our belongings."

This is not the first time when teenage hackers get arrested after having been involved in illegal web activities. Just think of AKILL, the 18-year-old hacker, based in New Zealand, who was caught using a large botnet to infect millions of computers around the world, causing damages of more than $26 million to people from various countries.