16 year old Boy Arrested Over TalkTalk Hack

A 16-year-old boy from London has been arrested in connection with the investigation into alleged data theft from TalkTalk.

Police confirmed officers carried out a search at a residential property in Liverpool in connection with the cyber attack.

It comes after a boy of 15 was held in Northern Ireland on suspicion of offences under the Computer Misuse Act over the same data breach.

The telecommunications company shut down its site following what it described as a "significant and sustained" attack in which customer details may have been stolen.

TalkTalk says the data hacked "is significantly less than originally suspected" with fewer than 1.2m customer email addresses, names and phone numbers accessed along with fewer than 21,000 unique bank account numbers and sort codes.

On 23 October it said it may have been the target of a ransom demand by the hackers.

The company's four million customers are being asked to check their accounts for any suspicious activity "over the next few months" and change their passwords.

The breach is the third in a series of cyber attacks that have affected TalkTalk customers.

In August, the firm revealed its mobile sales site was hit by a "sophisticated and co-ordinated cyber attack" in which personal data was accessed.

In February, customers were warned about scammers who managed to steal thousands of account numbers and names from TalkTalk's computers.

TalkTalk chief executive Dido Harding said she was still unsure how many of the telecoms giant's four million UK customers had been affected by the attack.

Anyone who believes they have been directly affected by the alleged data theft should visit http://help2.talktalk.co.uk/oct22incident