German security authorities hacked

While security authorities reported they had arrested two members of the hacking group linked to the attacks, the group Thursday released a statement saying that only its leader was under arrest. The 23-year-old leader of the so-called "n0n4m3 cr3w" (No Name Crew), calling himself Darkhammer, was arrested on Sunday, the Office of Criminal Investigation in the German state of Nordrhein-Westfalen reported this week.

The Federal Criminal Police office issued a press release on Tuesday saying that it had searched the apartment of a second suspect. Responding to that arrest and media reports regarding those taken into custody, the hacking group said in its statement: "Apparently none of the suspects is a member of the No Name Crew."

Members of the No Name Crew had claimed responsibility for infiltrating computers of the federal police and the customs service. They were able to steal information from servers running the spy program Patras and put it on their website. Patras is used by customs authorities, the federal police and police in the German states for tracking serious criminals. After the attacks were uncovered several federal and state authorities temporarily shut down their servers.

The attacks first became known already on July 8 but attracted bigger attention just after German newspaper "Bild am Sonntag" on Sunday cited a confidential report by the federal information security agency, BSI, saying that computers of the federal police had been infected by Trojans for months without detection.

The hacking group now offers an encrypted file for downloading on its website stating that it had collected e-mails and confidential data from the police and customs authorities. The group said it would release the password for the encrypted file should police arrest more of the group's members.