British Youth Arrested For Call Of Duty Server Attack

A 17-year-old Manchester, England area resident has been arrested in connection with an attack against online gameplay servers for one of Activision's Call of Duty titles. The unnamed suspect reportedly used a Call of Duty cheating tool known as Phenom Booter, which can remove specific players from game servers by a type of flooding attack/DDoS, in addition to shutting down servers entirely. The arrest was made based on a September tip to police by Activision, according to the BBC, after the Metropolitan Police's central e-crime unit traced the suspect's IP address as the source of the attack on the England-based servers. The teen was arrested on charges of violating the Computer Misuse Act, a 1990 UK law that punishes unauthorized access or modification of computer material with fines and up to five years of imprisonment. "Programs marketed in order to disrupt the online infrastructure not only affect individual players but have commercial and reputational consequences for the companies concerned," said Detective Inspector Det Insp Paul Hoare, in a statement. "These games attract both children and young people to the online environment and this type of crime can often be the precursor to further offending in more traditional areas of online crime." In October, the servers for indie hit Minecraft were hit by a DDoS attack, allegedly from disgruntled fans mad about the slow pace of updates.