Arrest made in the UK over Xbox Live and Playstation Network outages [Updated]

If you were trying to use your shiny new Xbox One or Playstation 4 on Christmas Day and found yourself impacted by the outages caused by 'Lizard Squad', you may be interested to note that an arrest has been made in the UK relating to those events.

In documents sent to Neowin, Vinnie Omari has been accused of "hacking of the Playstation Network and Xbox Live systems over the Christmas Period". Omari is now out on bail and shared the documents via Snapchat which were then passed on to us.

While this is the first arrest related to the recent service disruptions, it may not be the last. In the most recent incident of this nature, Lulzsec had a member turn against the others in the group, which led to the arrests of more individuals. As with many such incidents, those who take down a service typically can't keep their mouths shut, which leads to their eventual arrest.

The Thames Valley Police issued a statement about the arrest:

The South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU) has arrested a 22-year-old man from Twickenham on suspicion of fraud by false representation and Computer Misuse Act offences.

The arrest yesterday (30/12) is in connection with an ongoing investigation in to cyber fraud offences which took place between 2013 and August 2014 during which victims reported funds being stolen from their PayPal accounts.

The arrested man was released on bail until 10 March.

Omari looking a bit :( in an interview he gave on Sky News.

In further conversations with those who are familiar with the investigation and the arrest, Omari believes that the police will not find anything of substance on his computers. His alleged crime is that he helped coordinate the DDOS attack on the service. Further, Omari believes that this arrest will give him more credibility in the cyber security space.

The police statement only mentions the Paypal fraud but if you look at the arrest warrant. it mentions the fraud along with the attacks on Xbox Live and Playstation Network.

While this arrest will not recoup the time lost that could have been spent gaming on Christmas Day, this may well prevent future attacks by the same group.

Jerry Grey contributed to this report.