A teenager has been arrested on charges of hacking more than 5,000 websites as part of the collective known as Anonymous, sources from Chosun Newspaper said yesterday.
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said Tuesday that the 16-year-old was arrested for violating relevant laws.
The teenager allegedly hacked a total of 5,070 times into 141 domestic and 3,706 foreign websites between April 2015 and April of this year.
Police said he taught himself how to hack since he was in middle school and took part in hacking attacks on Chinese websites by Anonymous supporting Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests back in 2014.
When he started high school last year, the boy had problems adjusting to school life and spent more time online with Anoymous as a means to relieve stress, police said.
He also hacked websites to show off. It took him less than five minutes to hack into a website, but he claims he merely altered the main page to leave a mark and did not disable the sites or steal private information.
The boy was nabbed after boasting about his feats on Twitter and Facebook.
