Police arrested an 18-year-old man in Southport, near Liverpool, UK as part of an investigation into the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that took down Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live systems last year.
The South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU) said in a statement that the man is also suspected of swatting -- that is, knowingly providing false information to law enforcement agencies by "suggesting that a threat exists at a particular location so that police respond with tactical units."
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"We are still at the early stages of the investigation and there is still much work to be done. We will continue to work closely with the FBI to identify those to who commit offences and hold them to account," said Craig Jones, head of the cyber crime unit at SEROCU.
Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live experienced severe outages on Christmas Day, and both services were unavailable unavailable for days. Hacker group Lizard Squad claimed credit for taking down the networks.
On Dec. 31, 2014, the Thames Valley Police announced the arrest of a 22-year-old man from Twickenham, England, "on suspicion of fraud by false representation and Computer Misuse Act offences." It was widely reported that the man was a member of Lizard Squad. It's unclear whether the two arrests are related.
Lizard Squad itself confirmed the arrest of at least one member on its Twitter account in early January. At the time of this writing, the account has not commented on Friday's arrest.