The teenage hacker arrested last week in the U.K. for his alleged involvement with Anonymous and LulzSec is reportedly an 18-year-old named Jake Davis.
Scotland Yard on Sunday revealed that the hacker known as "Topiary" is actually Davis, from the U.K.'s Shetland Islands, according to security firm Sophos and Daily Mail crime reporter Chris Greenwood.
Davis will appear in a London court on Monday morning, Greenwood tweeted.
Scotland Yard has not yet posted any new information about the case since the Wednesday arrest. In a Sunday blog post, however, Sophos' Graham Cluley said Davis has five charges against him:
- Unauthorized access to a computer system, contrary to Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
- Encouraging / assisting offences, contrary to S46 of the Serious Crime Act 2007.
- Conspiracy with others to carry out a Distributed Denial of Service Attack on the Web site of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency contrary to S1 Criminal Law Act 1977.
- Conspiracy to commit offences of section 3 Computer Misuse Act 1990, contrary to S1 Criminal Law Act 1977.
- Conspiracy between the defendant and others to commit offences of section 3 Computer Misuse Act 1990 contrary to S1 Criminal Law Act 1977.
Cluley also said a source told him Davis is an "avid online chess player" and was arrested on the northern island of Yell. "Frankly, it's hard to imagine a more remote place in the British Isles to be," he wrote.
Last week, Scotland Yard said it had arrested a man who "is believed to be linked to an ongoing international investigation in to the criminal activity of the so-called 'hacktivist' groups Anonymous and LulzSec, and uses the online nickname 'Topiary' which is presented as the spokesperson for the groups."
The day after that announcement, the LulzSec Exposed blog said Scotland Yard had arrested the wrong person because its evidence suggested that Topiary was actually a 22-year-old Swedish man named Daniel Sandberg. That, however, has not been confirmed.
As PCMag pointed out in a recent overview of the key LulzSec players, Topiary is reportedly second-in-command within LulzSec, though he is thought to be the least tech-savvy in the group. As a result, he acted as a PR liaison for Anonymous before moving over to LulzSec.
He recently deleted posts from the @atopiary Twitter account; it now only has one tweet from July 21: its new "You cannot arrest an idea" tagline. The bio on that Twitter page says Topiary is a "simple prankster turned swank garden hedge [who] worked with Anonymous, LulzSec, and other such paragons of intense cyber victory. You are free."
The @LulzSec Twitter feed has not been updated since July 27, the day of Davis' arrest. A recent tweet from the @AnonymousIRC feed encouraged officials, in all caps, to free Topiary and other hackers who have been arrested in recent weeks, including "tflow."
Members of Anonymous and LulzSec have been arrested throughout the world in recent months, including Spain, Turkey, the U.K., the Netherlands, and the United States. In retaliation, Anonymous recently organized a boycott of PayPal, though the company said that effort had little effect.
Update: Scotland Yard on Monday confirmed Davis' arrest.