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Police Arrest Second Alleged Member of Teen Group that Hacked CIA Director

Despite promises of more attacks, it seems like the authorities are getting their hands on more and more members of “Crackas With Attitude.”
Image: Pete Markham/Flickr

The grip seems to be tightening around the infamous group of teenage hackers that's been targeting US government agencies and high-level officials for months.

On Tuesday, police in Scotland arrested a 15-year-old boy from Glasgow, whom a source told Motherboard is one of the main members of the hacking group known as "Crackas With Attitude," or CWA. The teenager, according to the source, is the hacker known as "Cubed."

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The arrest of the teenage hacker comes only a week after UK police, working with the FBI, arrested another alleged member of the group, a 16-year-old boy suspected of being Cracka, another main member of the group. Following the arrest of the boy in the UK, other members of the group, including Cubed, pledged to keep hacking and threatened the US government with more attacks.

A close friend of the arrested hacker confirmed he was the CWA member known as Cubed. The close friend spoke to Motherboard on condition of anonymity.

"I hope he's okay, he was like a brother to me," the source said.

A spokesperson from Police Scotland confirmed the arrest of a boy suspected of hacking crimes, but declined to answers questions on whether he was one of the members of the hacking group.

"Following a search of a property in the Glasgow area on Tuesday the 16th of February, a 15-year old male was arrested in connection with alleged offenses under the Computer Misuse Act 1990," the spokesperson said in a prepared statement. "He has since been released from custody and he is subject of a report to the procurator fiscal."

The arrest was first reported by the local tabloid the Daily Record on Thursday. The paper also reported that FBI agents flew to Glasgow to question the boy. Before that, on Wednesday morning (US time) another member of CWA tweeted that Cubed had been arrested.

The member, known as IncursioSubter, did not respond to a request for comment. Other members of the group declined to comment as well.

In a phone call, an FBI spokesperson didn't respond to questions regarding the arrest. And a spokesperson from the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU), the UK agency who arrested the teenager suspected of being Cracka, also declined to comment.

In October, Cracka and Cubed claimed to have broken into the AOL email account of John Brennan. This was just the first in a long list of attacks on high profile officials such as FBI's executive assistant Amy Hess, US spy chief James Clapper, a former senior executive at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and President Barack Obama's senior advisor on science and technology John Holdren.

More recently, the hackers were also apparently involved in a breach at the US Department of Justice, which ended up with the dump of almost 29,000 names, titles, email addresses and phone numbers from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.