Dutch police, in close collaboration with their South Korean counterparts, have arrested one Dutch and one Australian teenager on suspicion of hacking into the servers of a telecom operator and a number of universities worldwide, police here said Thursday.

Police said they launched the joint probe after a South Korean college student reported a hacking incident into the internal server of Dutch telecom firm KPN in January.

The 25-year-old student, whose name was withheld, read a message in one of his university’s chatrooms where the writer claimed to have hacked into KPN, the largest telecom operator in the Netherlands, and informed the company via Twitter, according to the Cyber Terror Response Center at the National Police Agency.

The investigation, which came at KPN’s request, involved Dutch police officials stationed here.

The Dutch and Australian suspects, aged 17 and 16, respectively, allegedly broke into the internal servers of KPN and universities in nine countries including South Korea, Japan, Germany, and the Netherlands, between December and January, the police said.

The teenagers were arrested separately in their native countries under a joint investigation also with Australian police. “We will send our investigation records to the Netherlands to help with criminal procedures there,” said an official at the NPA. “Close collaboration with foreign investigative agencies will continue to be required to crack down on cross-border cyber crime.” 

(Yonhap News)