The youth arrested by the PCeU is thought to be ‘MLT’, a member of and spokesperson for the TeaMp0isoN hacking group. "He has been taken to a local police station for interview. Computer equipment has been seized and is undergoing a detailed forensic examination", the police said.
A Met spokesperson said that TeaMp0isoN has claimed responsibility for more than 1,400 offenses where personal and private information has been illegally extracted from victims in the UK and around the world. These have included attacks against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook page of outgoing French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and Tony Blair’s address book. The group also claimed to be behind attacks against RIM last summer when the Blackberry blog was defaced following its promise to help the police find the London rioters. “We feel for those impacted by the riots in London. We have engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can,” the company Tweeted. TeaMp0isoN responded, “You Will _NOT_ assist the UK Police because if u do innocent members of the public who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and owned a blackberry will get charged for no reason at all... if you do assist the police by giving them chat logs, gps locations, customer information & access to peoples BlackBerryMessengers you will regret it”, the group warned.
TeaMp0isoN recently mounted an attack against Scotland Yard’s counter-terror hotline by bombarding the switchboard with automated Skype messages. They also recorded a conversation in which counter-terrorism officers discussed the attack, claiming (in an email to the Press Association from ‘Trick’) to have obtained it via a compromised server in Malaysia. Scotland Yard admitted the recording was genuine, but stressed that it had not been obtained through hacking and that their internal communication system had not been breached. Two youths were arrested the next day.
Posts on Pastebin, however, paint a confused picture over the recent status of TeaMp0isoN. “Two teenagers get arrested in the UK :) - This is the end of TeaMp0isoN” said one message referring to the earlier arrests following the telephone attack on the anti-terror hotline. This message names ‘MLT’ as one of the two arrested youths (‘Trick’ was the other), and adds “MLT was most likely raided and has turned informant.” The message finishes with a rant apparently against a supposed anti-Israeli stance of the group. More recently, two days before the Newcastle arrest, another message, possibly from the same person, claims the author is leaving TeaMp0isoN because of its pro-Arab anti-Israel posture: “i am 17 years old and joined TeaMpOisoN 2 years ago and i am sick of this ! ... bye TeaMpOisoN you suck.”