Potential PlayStation Network, LulzSec hacker arrested in UK - Report

British police have apprehended a man they suspect of being part of LulzSec, according to Develop. The British magazine quotes a Scotland Yard spokesperson as saying that the investigative police force has connected a 19-year-old Essex resident it arrested earlier today with the hacker group, which has been blamed for a recent wave of cyberattacks. Companies victimized by the attacks include Elder Scrolls and Fallout publisher Bethesda Softworks and Eve Online publisher CCP Games.

On its official website, London's Metropolitan Police have only officially announced that following "a pre-planned intelligence-led operation" assisted by the US's Federal Bureau of Investigation, a man was taken into custody and is being held for questioning. (The man's residence in the UK's Essex region was also searched, leading to the "examination of a significant amount of material.") However, Develop reports that the suspect was charged with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) website, which LulzSec claimed responsibility for.

Further, the Scotland Yard spokesperson told the magazine that the "We will examine the individual for any Sony data" in reference to April's PlayStation Network data breach. The data theft, which saw over 77 million PSN users' data compromised, led to a nearly month-long outage of the PlayStation 3 and PSP's online service and caused the PlayStation Store to be out of commission for nearly six weeks.

For its part, LulzSec used its Twitter feed--where it claimed responsibility for the Bethesda attack--to deny any connection to the arrested individual. This morning, the hacker collective posted the following message: "Seems the glorious leader of LulzSec got arrested, it's all over now… wait… we're all still here! Which poor bastard did they take down?"

Today's arrest comes just over a week after three suspects were arrested in Spain on suspicion of being involved with the PSN data breach. Spanish authorities accused those individuals of being part of Anonymous, the decentralized hacker collective blamed by Sony for the attacks on its service. However, Anonymous spokespersons have denied any official sanctioning of the PSN breach.