NEW YORK \u2014 A California man hacked and defaced websites for a West Point counterterrorism research center and a New York City government agency during a campaign of vandalism, federal prosecutors said on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A criminal complaint accuses Billy Ribeiro Anderson with hacking the two sites using the online pseudonym \u201cAlfabeto Virtual.\u201d It says he modified them to display \u201cHacked by Alfabeto Virtual.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The FBI arrested the 41-year-old Anderson early Thursday at his home in Torrance, California. He was to make a court appearance later in the day in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was no lawyer on record who could comment for the defendant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before his arrest, Anderson had used his computer skills to vandalize U.S. military, government and business websites more than 11,000 times since 2015, authorities said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAmong other possible effects, website defacements can disrupt an organization\u2019s operations and damage its credibility,\u201d said William Sweeney, head of the FBI\u2019s New York office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The alleged hacker struck the website for the New York City Comptroller in 2015 and, along with his pseudonym, plastered #FREEPALESTINE\u201d and \u201d#FREEGAZA\u201d on the site. About a year later, he defaced the site for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both West Point and the city agency had to spend thousands of dollars to correct the security breach, authorities said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A California man hacked and defaced websites for a West Point counterterrorism research center and a New York City government agency during a campaign of vandalism, federal prosecutors said on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":45864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":70,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[100,12,25,70],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1350],"class_list":["post-43641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-news","category-newsletters","category-your-army"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"JKJCYCFJEFF2JFI4P7FVSS6DQQ","arc_canonical_url":"\/dod\/army\/2018\/05\/11\/california-man-accused-of-cyber-tagging-west-point-website\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n