Razvan Manole Cernaianu, 20, was arrested by the Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism. He is charged with hacking into the Pentagon and NASA websites, as well as the Royal Navy website.
Among other exploits, TinKode hacked into a computer server at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and posted a screen grab of what he said was an FTP server containing files connected to confidential satellite data.
TinKode also hacked into the European Space Agency and MySQL, which he compromised by exploiting an SQL injection flaw.
In addition, Romanian authorities said Cernaianu, an IT student, designed a hacking program, which he put up for sale on his blog and posted a video on the blog showing the cyberattacks he carried out against official US government sites.
Commenting on the arrest, Graham Cluley, Sophos’ senior technology consultant, wrote in a blog: "TinKode's motivation has been more about mischief-making than the more malicious attacks we often see, fueled by a desire for publicity via his active Twitter and Facebook accounts. Perhaps now is a good time to remind everyone who thinks it's cool or amusing to expose an organisation's weak security that hacking into a site is still a crime, regardless of what your incentive may be.”