A British man has been re-arrested on suspicion of hacking the US government after officials from the States filed an extradition order, according to reports.
Lauri Love, 30, from Stradishall in Suffolk, has been charged with hacking the networks of NASA, the US Army, the Federal Reserve and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), among other departments.
He has apparently been indicted in Virginia, New York and New Jersey for the offenses, which were allegedly carried out between 2012 and 2013.
Love was first arrested in October 2013 by National Crime Agency (NCA) officers and released on bail.
At the time the FBI claimed that Love and his co-conspirators had planned the attacks in secret in IRC chat rooms and launched them from proxies and Tor servers to hide their identities.
They used SQL injection attacks and ColdFusion exploits to gain admin access to servers, planting backdoors on the systems so they could return later to steal PII on military personnel, government data, and other highly sensitive information.
The aim was to steal data and “disrupt the operations and infrastructure of the United States government,” according to a statement issued by the Feds.
The US authorities are claiming the incidents cost millions of dollars to remediate.
The case now threatens to reignite debate over the extradition laws between the UK and US, which many critics claim unfairly favor the States.
In fact, Gary McKinnon’s lawyer, Karen Todner, is acting on behalf of Love. She confirmed last week that he will be fighting extradition to the US, where he faces a decade behind bars.
McKinnon finally won his 10-year battle against extradition in 2012 when home secretary Theresa May told the Commons she would block the move on medical advice, which claimed the Asperger’s sufferer may kill himself if sent to face trial in the US.