An 18-year-old student in northwestern England has been charged in a series of cyberattacks on the websites of nearly a dozen multinational firms.
Jack Chappell is accused of supplying software that crashes websites by flooding them with data and with running a help-desk for cyber criminals.
West Midlands Police said in a statement that "Chappell allegedly attacked the websites of T-Mobile, EE, Vodafone, O2, BBC, BT, Amazon, Netflix, Virgin Media and the National Crime Agency." He is also accused of assisting hackers in a 2015 attack on NatWest. The force's cybercrime unit worked with the FBI, Israeli Police and Europol's European Cybercrime Centre during the investigation. Chappell has been charged alongside an American citizen.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has accused Russian security services of being behind a major cyber attack that crippled operations around the world earlier this week. The Eastern European country said its security service, the SBU, has determined that the attack, which appeared to begin in Ukraine before spreading across the globe on Tuesday, was orchestrated by the same hackers who attacked the Ukrainian power grid in December 2016. "The available data, including those obtained in cooperation with international antivirus companies, give us reason to believe that the same hacking groups are involved in the attacks, which in December 2016 attacked the financial system, transport and energy facilities of Ukraine.