Police arrested a 15-year-old boy over a cyber attack on telephone and internet provider TalkTalk, feared to have breached the data of millions of Britons, Scotland Yard said on Monday.
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United Kingdom authorities have arrested a 15-year-old teenager who is believed to have been involved in last week’s TalkTalk hack which compromised millions of user accounts and their personal data, including names, email addresses and a few financial details.
The detectives and special investigators from the Police Service of Northern Ireland are interrogating the accused.
However, the company said that credit and debit card numbers had not been stolen. “We will continue to assist with the ongoing investigation”, it said.
Police are now searching his home in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. They carried out searches at an address in County Antrim.
But crucially, any card numbers stolen were incomplete, and bank account numbers and sort codes-if stolen-would not allow an attacker to access an individual’s account.
The 15-year old boy arrested over an alleged cyber attack on TalkTalk has been released on bail, police said.
The company had recently insisted that the breach was “materially lower” than had been previously anticipated, adding it was impossible for customers lose money as a sole result of the cyber-attack.
The company’s chief executive Dido Harding has come under fire for failing to address concerns from experts that its systems would not be able to withstand a major breach.
TalkTalk says a group of hackers demanded ransom in connection with the cyberattack, though multiple groups are claiming responsibility for it, the Times reports.
The probe into the hacking is headed by Jesse Norman, the chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee.
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The company said it did not know how much of its customer information had been encrypted.
