U.K police said on Friday that they have arrested a man in Southport, Merseyside this morning as part of an investigation into computer hacking attacks on Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox systems. Officers from the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU) Cyber Crime Unit worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on the operation which focused on the denial of service attack of Sony Playstation and Xbox systems in 2014 and 'swatting' offences.

An 18-year-old man was arrested this morning (16/1) in Boundary Street, Southport on suspicion of unauthorised access to computer material.
A number of electronic and digital devices were seized to be examined by SEROCU’s Cyber Crime Forensic and eForensics Unit.

'Swatting' is a term used to describe criminal activity by an individual or group who knowingly provides false information to law enforcement agencies in the USA, suggesting that a threat exists at a particular location so that police respond with tactical units.

Both video game systems suffered long outages over Christmas after a major distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack. A hacking group calling itself Lizard Squad, which had attacked the two networks earlier last year, claimed responsibility.