14 DAY TRIAL // Two individuals, allegedly part of the Lizard Squad hacker group, have been arrested this week, one from the UK and one from Finland.
One of them, calling himself Ryan, has been identified as 17-year-old Julius Kivimäki, while the other is 22-year-old British citizen Vinnie Omari.
One of the hackers is out on bail
Omari’s home was raided by South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU) on December 30 and the police took all electronic equipment they found, from game consoles to phones, laptops and USB disks.
It seems that the arrest was not in relation with the recent DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks on PlayStation and Xbox gaming networks; it had to do with cyber fraud offenses that occurred between 2013 and August 2014, victims reporting funds being illegally withdrawn from their PayPal accounts. Omari has been released on bail.
Lizard Squad member Ryan was arrested because of an interview he did and he was found guilty of “aggravated harassment information.” As per Finnish penal code, he is to be jailed in Finland, since the crime itself was carried out from Finnish territory.
However, in a message on Twitter, Lizard Squad announced that his imprisonment was due to “being caught with his massive amount of laundered carder money.”
Even if Ryan remains in Finland, authorities cooperate with the FBI in regard to the gaming networks having been attacked and their services disrupted on Christmas day.
Lizards continue their business
In an older email conversation with one of the hackers, after the two appeared in video interviews, we were told that Ryan could not be successfully prosecuted for the DDoS attacks.
Despite these arrests, Lizard Squad continues to attract the attention of the media, and of the authorities, with their activity. At the end of 2014, the group launched Lizard Stresser, a DDoS utility that can be rented by anyone looking to knock services offline.
As recent as today, the tool was used to target Brian Krebs’ security blog. The website continues to be knocked down and the Lizards claimed responsibility for the attack in several tweets that were deleted shortly after they had been published. Luckily, we managed to catch them online and took a snapshot of them.
