A former student of Glasgow University has been charged with hacking into thousands of American computer systems including the US army, Nasa and other federal agencies, US authorities have said.
Lauri Love, 28, from Stradishall, Suffolk, is accused of breaching the systems to steal "massive quantities" of confidential data resulting in millions of dollars of losses.
He was arrested by officers from the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) under the Computer Misuse Act (CMA) on Friday and later charged by US authorities in New Jersey.
Mr Love was a student at the university two years ago and was a member of a group who occupied educational buildings for several months in a protest over fees.
He is charged with one count of accessing a US department or agency computer without authorisation and one count of conspiring to do the same.
If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 (£155,000) fine, or twice the total gain or loss from the offence.
NCA spokesman Andy Archibald said: "This arrest is the culmination of close joint working by the NCA, Police Scotland and our international partners.
"Cyber-criminals should be aware that no matter where in the world you commit cyber crime, even from remote places, you can and will be identified and held accountable for your actions."
The hacking is alleged to have taken place over the past 12 months. Love and co-conspirators - believed to be in Australia and Sweden - allegedly created "back doors" into government networks, allowing them to return to get data.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article