Laptop Teen Crashes Metropolitan Police's Website

A teenager, who crashed the Metropolitan Police Service's website by carrying out a cyber attack from his laptop, will be sentenced next month.

Jobless Jordan Jones, 19, of Windermere Avenue, Billingham, Cleveland slowed down the site over two days, eventually bring it grinding to a halt and inaccessible to the public.

His actions betweenAugust 12 and 14 last year resulted in a Denial of Service (DoS).

DoS attacks involve myriad requests sent to a single computer hosting a website, so that it is overloaded and effectively removed from the web.


Detectives from the Met's Cyber Crime Unit launched an investigation and, working with Cleveland Police, identified Jones as the culprit. 



On March 18 police arrested Jones at his home address, from which they also seized an encrypted laptop computer.

He pleaded guilty at Teeside Magistrates' Court to four unauthorised acts with intent to impair, or with recklessness as to impairing, the operation of a computer, under the Computer Misuse Act 1990, on 13 August 2014.



He is due to be sentenced at the same court on October 1.



Detective Inspector Sanjiv Gohil of the Met's Cyber Crime Unit, said: “Most denial of service attacks are aimed at businesses and the downtime to their websites can and often does cause a huge dip in their revenue.

In this case, the loss was to the public. Every day, thousands of people turn to the Met's website for advice about crime and to report offences.

“Being unable to do this and access the advice they are looking for there and then can make a huge difference to how crime impacts those people.



"I would like to reassure the public that there is no evidence of a compromise to anyone’s personal details as a result of this attack.”