A British Man has been charged with hacking into the servers of the US Federal Reserve and stealing users' personal information.

29-year-old Lauri Love is alleged to have worked with a team of other hackers to gain access to the Federal Reserve's systems between October 2012 to February 2013.

Using a SQL injection, Love is said to have accessed the names, email addresses and phone numbers of his victims and then posted them to a website he had previously gained control of.

He is charged with one count of computer hacking and one of aggravated identity theft. If found guilty, he faces up to 12 years in prison.

In a statement US Attorney Preet Bharara in New York said: "Lauri Love is a sophisticated hacker. We place a high priority on the investigation and prosecution of hackers who intrude into our infrastructure and threaten the personal security of our citizens."

These are not the first charges faced by Love, of Stradishall, Suffolk, in relation to computer offences in the US.

He is also accused of breaching the security of NASA, the FBI, the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the US Department of Energy (DOE), among others.

A report last year by the DOE found Love could have taken the information on up to 104,000 people, costing the US at least $3.7 million (2.2 million).

For these offences, Love is also potentially facing decades in prison and hundreds-of-thousands of pounds in fines.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has confirmed that computer hacker Gary McKinnon will not face charges in the UK, bringing his 10-year legal battle to a close.

McKinnon had been accused of gaining unauthorised access to 97 US government computers between 1 February 2001 and 19 March 2002, prompting demands for him to be extradited to the US to stand trial.

He previously admitted accessing the computers, claiming he was looking for evidence of extraterrestrial life, and had been facing the threat of up to 60 years in prison.

I feel the last 10 years have been gruelling.

Earlier this year, Home Secretary Theresa May quashed calls for McKinnon to be extradited to the US to stand trial, citing medical factors.

In a statement, the CPS has now confirmed there are no plans to commence a new criminal investigation into McKinnon, adding that the prospects of a conviction against him are not high.

"The potential difficulties in bringing a case in England and Wales now should not be underestimated, not least the passage of time, [and] the logistics of transferring sensitive evidence prepared for a court in the US to London for trial," the CPS statement said.

"US authorities indicated...they would be willing to co-operate with a prosecution...[but] they do not consider making all the US witnesses available for trial in London and transferring all of the US material for this jurisdiction would be in the interests of justice," it added.

Speaking to BBC News, Janis Sharp, McKinnon's mother, said she was delighted by the ruling.

"Gary admitted to the intrusion, he always denied the damage. I feel the 10 years have been gruelling, it's been life-destroying. It's difficult to explain how bad it's been," she said.

"To have this over is amazing. Gary's gone through enough. Other people have been accused of more serious hacking in this country and they've been given a 1,000 fine and a very short community sentence."

TVShack founder Richard O'Dwyer has been ordered to pay 20,000 by a US court that accused him of breaking copyright laws.

O'Dwyer has spent the last two years battling calls to extradite him to the US to stand trial for copyright offences related to the running of his TV Shack website.

The site allowed users to search for places online to watch TV shows, films and music videos, and post links to content for other members to view.

O'Dwyer has agreed to sign a deferred prosecution agreement, agreeing not to break any further US laws, which if he complies could result in the case against him being dropped.

The 20,000 fine will be used to repay victims whose copyright was allegedly infringed by TVShack's activities.

The outcome of the case is the result of deal O'Dwyer struck last month, where he agreed to travel to the US to sign the deferment agreement if it meant the charges and extradition order against him were dropped.

Home Secretary Theresa May initially agreed to extradite O'Dwyer to face charges in the US back in May, prompting Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to campaign against the decision on his behalf.

Speaking to BBC News, O'Dwyer reiterated that he does not think he broke the law with TV Shack.

"I'm glad the US has decided to drop the case. It's a pity the UK wasn't able to resolve this," he said.

"I'm looking forward to getting back to university and see all my friends."

Julia O'Dwyer, Richard's mother, said she was pleased the matter has finally been resolved.

"This could have been dealt with over two years ago without the threat of extradition, which in my view is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut," she added.

Guatemalan police arrested US anti-virus software pioneer John McAfee on Wednesday for illegally entering the country and said it would seek to expel him to neighbouring Belize.

McAfee, who had been in hiding for three weeks, crossed into Guatemala with his 20-year-old girlfriend to evade authorities in Belize who wanted to quiz him as "a person of interest" about the killing of his neighbour Gregory Faull.

"He entered the country illegally and we are going to seek his expulsion for this crime," Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla said. McAfee was detained by Guatemalan police and a member of Interpol at the upscale Intercontinental hotel in Guatemala City.

There is no international arrest warrant for McAfee.

One of Silicon Valley's first entrepreneurs to build an internet fortune, the 67-year-old made millions of dollars through the anti-virus software that now carries his name.

McAfee's behavior has been increasingly erratic in recent years but there is no international arrest warrant for him. Police in Belize say he is not a prime suspect.

Government spokesman Francisco Cuevas said the entrepreneur would be expelled to Belize and he expected the process to be completed by early Thursday morning.

Fernando Lucero, spokesman for Guatemala's immigration department, said immediate deportation had been ruled out.

McAfee's lawyer Telesforo Guerra was seeking an injunction to have him released and the American said on his blog www.whoismcafee.com that he would not now be returned to the Belize border until a higher judge reviewed the case.

McAfee was taken to a residence belonging to the immigration department guarded by a small group of police.

He had been seeking political asylum in Guatemala, which has been embroiled in a long-running territorial dispute with Belize. .

Residents and neighbors on the Caribbean island of Ambergris Caye, where McAfee has lived in Belize for about four years, say he is eccentric, impulsive, volatile and at times unstable, citing his love of guns and young women.

McAfee has said he believes authorities in Belize will kill him if he turns himself in for questioning. Belize's prime minister has denied this and called him paranoid and "bonkers."

"It's a wild, wild country," McAfee told Reuters in an interview in his hotel room just hours before his detention.

"Everyone sees one part of Belize," he said. "They think it's a wonderful, peaceful, lovely place, blue waters, so McAfee has got to be crazy. Maybe I am crazy. If I were, I wouldn't know."

In Belize, he was often seen with armed bodyguards dressed in camouflage, pistols tucked into his belt. McAfee's slain neighbor had complained about the loud barking of dogs that guarded his exclusive beachside compound.

His run-in with authorities in Belize is a world away from a successful life in the United States, where the former Lockheed systems consultant started McAfee Associates in the late 1980s. McAfee has no relationship now with the company, which was later sold to Intel.

There was already a case against McAfee in Belize for possession of illegal firearms, and police had previously raided his property on suspicion he was running a lab to make illegal synthetic narcotics.

He says he has not taken drugs since 1983.

"[Before then] I took drugs constantly, 24 hours of the day, I took them for years and years. I was the worst drug abuser on the planet," McAfee said. "Then I finally went to Alcoholics Anonymous, and that was the end of it."

But he has no regrets about the path his life has taken, or the loss of the lion's share of his fortune over the years and says he is happier now that he cares less for material things.

"My life has not declined," he said. "My life has been on the increase ever since I decided that stuff - houses, money - doesn't mean much. I had more money than I could spend in million lifetimes. Why would I care?"

McAfee says he has been persecuted by Belize's ruling party because he wouldn't pay out some $2 million to it.

"The misunderstanding of the severity of their request for money was my big mistake," McAfee said. "Had I known that, I would maybe have said $2 million is way too much. Let's negotiate something, just don't rape me for the next seven months. Writing a cheque would have been a lot easier."

The party has denied soliciting money from him.

McAfee has been living in the tiny Central American nation for about four years, and wants to return to live there eventually. But he says he is being framed, and denies any involvement in his neighbor's killing.

"We had one disagreement about a dog. I had disagreements with all my neighbors about my dogs. I had a disagreement with myself about my dogs. They were noisy," he said.

"Why would I leave behind the body and all the evidence?" he asked. "I'm not stupid."

One of the co-founders of file-sharing website, The Pirate Bay, has been arrested in Cambodia, and could be passed over to Swedish authorities for the alleged breach of copyright laws.

The Swedish man, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, 27, has been living in Cambodia for some time.

An appeals court in Sweden sentenced three others behind the site to between four months and 10 months in prison plus fines in 2010.

Warg failed to attend that hearing due to illness and his sentencing was deferred. He had originally been sentenced to a year in prison in 2009.

"We had a request from Sweden to make an arrest as he had committed cyber crime there," police spokesman Kirth Chantharith told Reuters.

"We don't have an extradition treaty with Sweden but there are other ways to do it," he added, without elaborating. Cambodian authorities were waiting for legal documents from Sweden, he said.

Cambodian website, Khmer440.com, which originally reported Warg's arrest, said he had been living in Phnom Penh for four years.

Swedish subsidiaries of prominent music and film companies had taken Pirate Bay to court claiming damages for lost revenue. Mainstream media firms have also taken steps in other countries to have it blocked.

Pirate Bay, launched in 2003, provides links to other sites where people can download music and films for free.

The group that controls it says no copyrighted material is stored on its servers and no exchange of files actually takes place there so it cannot be held responsible for what material is being exchanged.

Government surveillance agency GCHQ has hit back at claims its website was taken offline on Saturday by hacking group Anonymous.

The group's UK arm announced GCHQ's website as the target for its latest round of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks last week.

The weekly attacks are part of an ongoing protest by Anonymous against the UK government's extradition treaties with the US.

The GCHQ website was not taken down at all.

This week's attack, which started at 8pm on Saturday night, was the second time in two weeks the group has targeted GCHQ's website.

In a tweet sent by the @AnonATeam account, it was claimed the attack had succeeded, with the group posting a screen grab of the GCHQ site reading "service unavailable."

However, speaking to IT Pro earlier today, a GCHQ spokesperson denied this claim, before declining a request for a formal statement.

"What I can say is that the website was not taken down at all," he added.

The weekend proved to be a busy one for Anonymous, with the group staging further attacks in the UK and abroad, with mixed results.

Anonymous attacked government websites in Bahrain to demonstrate its displeasure at decision to stage a Formula One grand prix there this weekend.

The collective also staged an abortive DDoS attack on the Number 10 website on Sunday, before admitting it lacked the manpower needed to successively take the site down.

A tweet sent by the @AnonOpsUK account, less than an hour after the attack started, said the group had failed "miserably".

"Why is Number 10 such a b****r to down," asked the group in a follow-up post. "Unlike the Home Office, which can be down just by pressing the refresh button."

A student accused of breaching piracy laws is facing extradition to the US, where he could get up to five years in jail.

Sheffield Hallam student Richard O'Dwyer, the 23-year-old behind the TVShack website, lost his case at Westminster Magistrates' Court, but his lawyer indicated an appeal would be made.

US authorities believe TVShack, which O'Dwyer's lawyer Ben Cooper claimed hosts links to content rather than the actual content itself, breaches copyright laws.

The case was brought by the US Customs and Border Protection agency and no criminal charges were lodged by British authorities. TVShack was shut down by US authorities.

A 19-year-old British kid built a search engine, gets sued by US Government and is now fighting extradition to USA.

O-Dwyer's mother, who told the BBC she was not fully aware of what her son's website did, said Britain's extradition treaty with the US was "rotten."

Some from the tech industry have expressed their opinions over the case on Twitter.

"A 19-year-old British kid built a search engine, gets sued by US Government and is now fighting extradition to USA," said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at security firm F-Secure.

The case comes at a time when the Government is under pressure from MPs to review how it handles extradition hearings.

An independent review of the UK's current extradition arrangements carried out by Sir Scott Baker in 2010 claimed the current treaty between the US and the UK was fair.

However, the Joint Committee on Human Rights has called on the Government to renegotiate the UK-US agreement to ensure UK citizens get equal treatment to Americans.

The case of Gary McKinnon, who was accused of hacking into US military and NASA systems, continues as he also looks to avoid extradition.

President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron have discussed finding a solution to the potential extradition of hacker Gary McKinnon to the US.

Cameron said whilst he did not want to influence other talks around the "significant crime" McKinnon stands accused of, the PM hoped "a way through [could] be found".

"I trust this will get resolved in a way that underscores the seriousness of the issue but also underscores the fact that we work together and we can find an appropriate solution," Obama told journalists during a press conference at the White House.

However, Obama noted the president does not get involved in extradition decisions.

"What I expect is that my team will follow the law but they will also coordinate closely with an ally that is unparalleled in terms of our cooperative relationship [the UK]," the President said.

Obama also pointed to the seriousness of the cyber crime threat and the importance of fighting it with the help of the UK.

"We are going to see enormous amounts of vulnerability when it comes to information," he added.

Janis Sharp, Gary McKinnon's mother, told BBC Radio 5 live it was "wonderful" she had seen Cameron and Obama discussing her son on TV.

"David Cameron and Nick Clegg have always said that they wouldn't extradite Gary, he would be tried in the UK if they got in, and they are in now and I believe they'll keep that promise no matter what," she said.

Sharp added her son was "obviously hopeful" but remained in a "frightened, tense state" over the potential extradition.

Despite Sharp's hopes, Deputy Prime Minister Clegg recently suggested he was unsure how easy it would be for the government to prevent McKinnon, an Asperger's Syndrome sufferer, from being extradited to the US.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson has defended his role in the case of Gary McKinnon, stating that his hands are tied by the UK/US Extradition Treaty, which gives the US the right to demand the extradition of the hacker.

Speaking at a Home Affairs Committee meeting, Johnson revealed that he had no "discretion" when it came to opposing the extradition, which some claim is unfair.

This was because the Act doesn't require the US to have admissible evidence of the offence committed for McKinnon to be forcefully removed from the UK. This isn't true the other way round.

He said: "If anyone was being extradited from the UK, with their crime committed in the US, that's legal that's set out in the Act. I have to judge the conditions that apply."

However, Johnson said he "stopped the clock" on the appeal due to fresh medical evidence being given to him which the final' High Court judgement in July didn't hear.

"It says that the situation has deteriorated and Gary McKinnon's psychological state is much worse. It says that his propensity for suicide has become that much greater," the Home Secretary said.

"I felt given that this wasn't brought before the High Court, and it would be wrong not to see whether this breached Gary McKinnon's article three human rights."

Article three of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits torture as well as inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment'.

McKinnon admits hacking into NASA and Pentagon computers, but claims he was not out to do any harm and was simply looking for evidence of aliens.

He has been now fighting for several years to avoid extradition, with his Asperger's being one of the factors in his defence.

Johnson was unsure about what would happen if the evidence did point to a breach in McKinnon's human rights.

"It's a very good question. I'm not looking at what happens next. I think it's then a matter for the prosecuting authorities to decide what happens," he said.

Admitted hacker Gary McKinnon finally achieved a victory in his long fight against extradition to the US, as he was granted a judicial review to challenge his case in the High Court.

The new ruling means that the computer hacker can stay in the UK while the challenge is made. His lawyers and supporters have argued that McKinnon's Asperger's Syndrome puts him at risk of suicide or psychosis if he is extradited to the US.

McKinnon has been accused of hacking military computers in 2001. He admitted the charge of hacking, but he denied that he did it maliciously or caused the amount of damage the US authorities are claiming.

As well as the High Court challenge, McKinnon's lawyers also sent a letter to the Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer QC asking if he can be tried under UK law for his crime. A reply will be sent in four weeks.

According to the BBC, McKinnon's mother Janis Sharp said: "We are overjoyed that the British Courts have shown sense and compassion by allowing our son Gary, a young man with Asperger's syndrome, this judicial review.

"We have always been outraged by the Home Office's decision to have him extradited to stand trial in a foreign land where he would face an out-of-proportion sentence to what is essentially a crime of eccentricity."