- Teenager jokes online that laptop is now in police custody
- Five males aged 15 to 26 arrested in January over the hacking attack
Sprawling on a mattress with his laptop, this is the baby-faced Briton at the centre of a global investigation into cyber-attacks which caused chaos on one of the busiest online shopping days of last year.
He is Chris Wood, aka Coldblood – the self-proclaimed spokesman of a shadowy group of ‘hacktivists’ called Anonymous which caused unprecedented mayhem before Christmas.
The 19-year-old computer geek, who went on Radio 4’s Today programme to boast about its activities, is among six young men aged 15 to 26 who have been arrested over cyber-attacks on MasterCard, as well as online payment network PayPal and a Swiss bank.
Nerdy: 19-year-old Chris Wood, aka, Coldblood, boasts that his laptop is now in a police evidence room after cyber-attacks on MasterCard that caused mayhem before Christmas
Thousands of shoppers worldwide were affected by the onslaught, which highlighted the vulnerability of the world’s computer systems.
It is thought just a few dozen hacktivists launched the ‘distributed denial of service’ (DDoS) attack, which was then taken up by supporters.
Scary: An image from Wood's Facebook page shows a masked man splattered with blood and smoking
It involved around 2,000 computers bombarding the MasterCard website’s host computers with requests for information, causing them to crash.
Anonymous acted after the arrest of WikiLeaks guru Julian Assange and the decision by credit card companies to cut off payments to the whistleblowing site.
On the internet, Wood makes light of his alleged involvement with Anonymous.
On one picture posted online he is reclining on a bed with a laptop and writes: ‘The funny thing is that computer is now in a police evidence room.’
Although he acted as frontman for Anonymous in interviews for BBC Radio 4 and other broadcasters, some in the hacking community believe he was set up by other members of the group after he broke its code of silence by talking to the media.
Before his arrest in January, he spoke to the Mail about how he and other hackers would continue their campaign. He insisted that what they were doing was not illegal, merely ‘a form of protest’.
Spotty and wearing a black tie with a skull and crossbones on it, he sipped a pint of lager in a pub in St Albans, Hertfordshire, as he outlined the objectives of Anonymous.
At the time he refused to give his real name. He has been identified after a Daily Mail investigation.
He said his group has ‘quite a few factions’ and added: ‘It’s about freedom of speech on the internet and keeping the internet open.’
Scotland Yard said five males aged 15 to 26 were arrested in January over offences under the Computer Misuse Act 1990, and remain on bail.
Support: Anonymous acted after the arrest of WikiLeaks guru Julian Assange
A sixth man, aged 22, was arrested in April. A spokesman added: ‘This investigation is being carried out in conjunction with international law enforcement agencies in Europe and the U.S.’
Last night Wood told the Mail he would not comment until the police dropped the ‘unfounded’ claims against him.
However, he denied he had lost his job as a programmer over the arrest and claimed that his boss had been ‘understanding and supportive’, as had his parents.
He insisted he did not speak on behalf of Anonymous. ‘What I tried to do was get the message out about what Anonymous was doing and more importantly why they where doing it,’ he declared. He also claimed the Met Police’s computer experts had struggled to understand his system.
‘From a technical point of view they were not all that knowledgeable in computers,’ he said.
Earlier this week Ryan Cleary, 19, of Wickford, Essex, was accused of carrying out a hacking attack on the website of the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency. He was remanded in police custody by City of Westminster magistrates.
Cleary was arrested as part of a Scotland Yard and FBI probe into LulzSec, a hacktivist group which has apparently broken away from Wood’s Anonymous.