The teenager has been arrested on May 11 and Osaka Police have filed a case of obstruction of business charges against him. The police say the teen launched a denial-of-service (DoS) attack against the Osaka Board of Educations server which holds the webpages of 444 elementary, junior high, and high schools in the area. Although in high school now, at the time of the attacks last November, the student was in junior high school. According to police, he said his own school environment is what motivated his actions. Police seized the student’s computer and some books about hacking. It is believed that he downloaded a DDoS tool which sent large volumes of data to the Board of Education servers, rendering access impossible for periods of about an hour. He would then confirm the take-down by monitoring the websites with his smartphone. He also told police that he had wanted to join the hacking group Anonymous and that he didn’t know schools other than his own would be affected in the attack. This incident would mark the first time in the history of Japan that a cyberattack was launched against a local government, and punishments for such a crime include a maximum three-year-prison sentence or 500,000 yen fine.
