UK man arrested over PlayStation, Xbox attacks

British police have arrested a man in northwest England following the 2014 attacks on Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox systems.

Both systems suffered long outages over Christmas after a major distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack.

A hacking group calling itself Lizard Squad claimed responsibility, and taunted authorities while attempting to market a DDoS service.

Over the weekend Merseyside police said they had arrested a man in Southport as part of an investigation into swatting and computer hacking offences.

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

The 18 year-old was arrested under suspicion of unauthorised access to computer material, unauthorised access with intent to commit further offenses, and threats to kill.

The officers had worked closely with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation in the operation, local police said. No further details of the arrest were made available.

UK police also arrested a 22 year-old man from Twickenham believed to be linked to Lizard Squad late last year on unrelated charges involving PayPal fraud offences. He was later released on bail.